


A Lovers' Farewell VI: Love Will Prevail

by 852_Prospect_Archivist



Series: A Lover's Farewell by Blue Champagne [6]
Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Angst, Drama, M/M, Multiple Partners, Other: See Story Notes, Series: A Lovers Farewell, other pairing - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 00:16:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 46,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/791841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/852_Prospect_Archivist/pseuds/852_Prospect_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sentinel is a sentinel is a sentinel...or is it?<br/>This story is a sequel to A Lovers' Farewell V: A Loving Nature.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Go to the end of the story for the spoiler warning. It is NOT for any form of BDSM or noncon.

  
This story has been split into three parts for easier loading.

 

## A Lovers' Farewell VI: Love Will Prevail

by Blue Champagne

Author's webpage: <http://members.aa.net/~bluecham/>

Author's disclaimer: I don't own anybody. Making no money. Have no money. The usual.

* * *

A LOVER'S FAREWELL VI: Love Will Prevail -- Part One

Alex Barnes tried to kill me by trapping me in a lift well. I was knocked stupid by the impact when I hit the bottom--where I would have been crushed by the descending platform if Megan Connor hadn't punched Alex's lights out and then pulled me up and over the edge, with only a modicum of help from me. She had to drag me by the back of my pants to get my legs clear. I've never been so happy to get a wedgie. She also had to open the guard grate I was on the wrong side of before she could reach for me, so even if I'd had my shit together, I couldn't have gotten out without her. No question about it; no Megan at that moment, no Jim alive today, thanks to Alex Barnes...

...and I still couldn't keep from wanting to protect her. Even though I knew she was willing to kill me, and to commit second-degree murder casually in the course of her robberies; that security guard couldn't have been the only one to make the unwise move of trying to do his job against a calculating killer. She very nearly succeeded in killing me; she _did_ succeed in killing Blair--briefly. (And I can't even go there right now. Blair and I have been through it and back. The issue rests in peace, finally...bad choice of words.)

Blair assumed it had to do with some kind of summons--a sort of sentinel common unconscious that we somehow triggered by our proximity to each other. Maybe a biological imperative was responsible for the sexual attraction; make baby sentinels. He also thinks that it may have been nothing but a side effect of the larger picture with me, her, and the temple; plus our never having come in any kind of contact with another sentinel before.

Or so I thought.

But his senses never manifested--trauma, maybe, Blair says. Same reason mine remised.

So, I still wanted to protect Alex. And I just _wanted_ Alex--maybe side effect, maybe selected-for trait; indeterminate.

I always wanted to protect Stephen, too.

Maybe I didn't know he was a sentinel; maybe he didn't. Maybe I was in remission part of the time, maybe he never manifested the gene while we were growing up. But still, two sentinels. So maybe...

Except that Blair says no. I told all these thoughts to him, and he said that it was understandable that, finding this out about Stephen, I might try to fit our devotion to each other and our becoming lovers into that context--make it a situation about two sentinels, rather than a situation about my brother and me. "I know you're trying hard, Jim...but it's not surprising you'd grab at a chance to depersonalize things. It would be easier to say 'Oh, of course, I had an affair with my brother because of a genetic quirk we both have, and my abandoning him like I did is understandable because the desire to protect him outweighed all other considerations, even how hurt he would be by my rejection of him, even my love for him.' But that's not the way it was. You and Stephen fell in love all on your own, and you, Jim, were forced to make some extremely rough choices--and, several years later, you also made some ill-advised ones. I wish you could file all that under 'sentinel weirdness' and leave it at that, but this has nothing to do with your being sentinels. It has to do with love, and fear, and hurt--loss--but let me reemphasize love, because the love was stronger than any of the other factors. Strong enough to bring you back together after twenty years apart and half a dozen different betrayals on either side. Don't reduce that kind of love to nothing more than a genetic fluke. It isn't."

I hate when he gets that look in his eyes, and that emphatic tone in his voice--it goes all deep and clipped. Well, guess I only hate it when it's directed at me, because it usually means he's telling me something I don't want to hear, and, judging by past experience, it nearly always means he's right, too...

You know, since what happened to Alex, and now discovering Stephen, Blair has a new theory about manifestation and remission of sentinel abilities. At first, it didn't seem plausible that the senses should be as fragile and latticed with potential disasters as they are--after all, my type and degree of sensitivity are surprisingly inconstant. He thought, in my case, that this was because I was not in the environment I was genetically designed for; and the modern world, both in itself and in my reactions to being a sentinel in it, bombarded my senses into fluctuating, and occasionally vanishing altogether.

But maybe sentinels _need_ that inconstancy. The primitive world wasn't exactly all sweetness and light, either--have you ever been through a thunderstorm on a South American plateau? Chewed coca leaves? Been hit with the kind of _smells_ that exist in the jungle?--and it could be that the human nervous system, peripheral and central, can't support that much traffic without circuits crossing, misfiring, the information the neurons carry being rendered so much nonsense...which would quickly make anybody insane, maybe drive them into catatonia--like Alex ended up, after going back into that pool. And then--in the primitive world--they'd shortly have been dead. It's possible that the tendency to remiss or repress was selected for. Maybe sentinels who didn't have it when they really needed it didn't live long enough to reproduce.

I've had spikes. I've thought I was going insane, and then I thought that even if what was happening to me wasn't a result of insanity, it would have made me crazy pretty damn quick if I hadn't remised...or been found by Blair. It's the most terrifying thing that's ever happened to me, and if you knew the things that are coming in second to that, you'd understand how terrifying I mean. And the thought of it going on until the poor bastard in question is driven insane is enough to turn my stomach, which doesn't turn easily.

The thought of it happening to Stephen is enough to break me down entirely.

Not my Stevie.

* * *

"Yeah, Simon, you heard me right."

There was silence at the other end of the phone.

Then: "And no one...he never..."

"No. He never manifested the senses until now."

Another pause, a trademark Simon groan/sigh, and a quiet "So that's your family emergency?"

"Yeah. I'm gonna need a few more days, Simon."

"What about Sandburg? Isn't he the one who knows how to take care of you people?"

"Yes, he is, but there's no way Blair can keep up with his work at the University, work with me at the station--if he's going to guide Stephen, I'll be working solo again for a while-- _and_ deal with a brand-new sentinel whose senses are cycling like a busted washing machine and needs almost twenty-four hour care. Whether this is usual or not for a sentinel who hasn't manifested the abilities early on--Blair says we don't have enough samples to plot a reliable curve--what's certain is that in Stephen's case...it's hitting him hard. You've seen me spike, Simon--you've seen me have weird reactions to all kinds of drugs. You've seen--hell, we both know what you've seen. Stephen is in that place, cubed. We can't leave him to do a multi-spike into insanity--that much pain will drive anyone crazy--or leave him with the only functioning sense he has being the sense of balance provided by his inner ear, and between me and Sandburg, I can take the time without seriously dicking with my job situation a lot more easily. It's not like I don't _have_ the time to take."

"Easy, Jim, I got it. It's just...this is a shocker, that's all. Though between the two of us...I may be dropjawed, here, but I can see how you'd be frantic. What are you doing about his work? You'll have to tell his partners something. If he's as bad off as you say, he likely won't be able to resume his duties for a while even after you get the spiking under control."

"He's got a friend named Marah Simmons--used to be his secretary, a long time ago. She's a financial analyst now and technically she works for him at the moment, though she's not on regular payroll--Stephen's firm is one of _her_ clients. Anyway, she's a friend, and she's familiar with his partners and his situation there, so we're having her act as..."

"An intercessor?"

"I was going to say a go-between. Stephen's a full partner now, for God's sake."

"And what are you telling his friend?"

"That he's having a flare-up of an inherited neurological condition, and doesn't want the fact he has it getting out--and that he's receiving the best help available."

"Nice. No lie. Sandburg?"

"Who else?"

"And she's going to tell _them_ what?"

"She said to leave that to her. I get the feeling she's going to pull something pretty shameless, anyway." He remembered Stephen telling him about how Marah had saved him from having Murrison's boot print permanently engraved in his ass. "Play on their sympathy, so they'll feel too bad about things to ask any in-depth questions, or press to talk to him themselves. But just in case, we've got him here at the loft, so there'll be no inexplicable traffic at his house. Schroeder lives just up the street from him. Besides, all of Blair's sentinel-sense-palliating arsenal is here."

"Whatever works. Jim...for what it's worth, I know how upset you must be right now. Barely had him back for a year, and now this."

'I've had him back a lot less time than that,' Jim thought, but said only "Thanks. Yeah, it's...Simon..." his voice weakened slightly and he sat down heavily on the couch. "We...we have to keep him doped a lot of the time. Sandburg was working with him a few hours ago...you know, Stephen hates drugs. Blair says they probably make him sick and strange, like they do me. But after a couple of hours, he always winds up begging Blair for a shot. The only reason he doesn't cry is because the pressure in his head hurts too much if he does, he winds up deaf with the roaring in his ears. He hasn't eaten in days; all he can stand to swallow is distilled water, and judging by his expression even _that_ tastes like the jug or something. I'm starting to lose it here, Simon."

"Just take it easy, Jim. Sandburg knows his stuff. You wouldn't be here today if he didn't."

"I know...but you haven't seen him," Jim muttered, obviously not referring to Blair. "Blair says he's getting more control, that he has more of a handle on it than he did, but he keeps losing it. He just can't keep..."

"Jim." Simon's voice was as solicitous as Jim had ever heard it; he knew with some free portion of his mind that Simon was probably as flabbergasted at Jim's evincing his emotional distress so plainly as he was at the news about Stephen. "He's your brother. Nothing's more important. You've got whatever time you need...look, I know Stephen pretty well. The man is a bulldog. Once he gets to using the same determination here that he's got in the boardroom, he'll pull out of this. Okay?"

"Okay, Simon. Thanks."

"No sweat. I've been meaning to get out of this chair and do some real policework anyway; and Connor's still unpartnered--if I do some work with her, the department can handle your being gone a while. This'll give me a chance to shake up the grey matter a little. Keep me informed, right?"

"We will. Thanks again." Jim hung up, and slumped against the back of the couch, with a long, silent sigh.

* * *

I don't know if I can do this.

Yeah, I'm about sixty times more qualified than anybody else alive, but that's like saying a paramedic is sixty times more qualified than your average member of the laity to take out an appendix--yeah, she is, but that's still not saying much.

I'm scared to leave him. Yeah, I've been scared to leave Jim, but that was because he might zone in the middle of a firefight. Stephen's here at the loft, lying in Jim's bed, which we keep having to make up with fresh pratesi cotton sheets, because right now, for him, silk has too coarse a grain--yes, I said silk has too coarse a grain--and besides, he keeps ripping silk ones. We tried satin, but he slides off the bed when he thrashes. He actually managed to joke about that. "Things are tacky as hell anyway." I think that was the only coherent thing he said for the next couple of hours.

We just pulled him out of another oatmeal bath soak. He likes those--anybody with itchy upset skin likes those--but if he had his way, he'd never get out. This, of course, would eventually give him a case of trenchfoot over his entire body. Trenchfoot is painful even when it's just on your feet. So we let him soak as long as it's safe, then we pull him out.

The frankincense does seem to be helping a little. We had to close all the windows and dump the trash and a lot of the more pungent-smelling spices and food, because it was nauseating him, but he's stopped sneezing and coughing and hiding his face in the sheets or the pillow. Frankincense is a light resin incense, not dried leaves, so it doesn't smoke much at all. I've tried burning it for Jim, and while he likes the smell, and it doesn't aggravate his nose or lungs--even has a slight soothing, astringent affect--it wasn't strong enough to be effective for what I was looking for, namely something to act as a white-noise generator for his sense of smell. I wanted a blocker that would mask unpleasant odors without being strong enough to knock him on his ass. We wound up using peppermint oil, like the Forensics people at gut-wrenching murder scenes do; it's better than nothing, but Jim sneezes if he gets too close to the diffuser. So it would have been way too strong for Stephen. He spikes unpredictably, and sometimes it's impossible to tell how many senses are involved.

We've got Jim's super-soft sleeping mask on him, and it doesn't seem to be irritating his sense of touch most of the time--very infrequently, when he starts sitting up and trying to get off the bed so that nothing but the soles of his feet will be touching anything harsher than a one-atmosphere mixture of nitrogen, oxygen and argon (with trace gases), he rips it off and just squinches his eyes closed. Doesn't happen often.

He's wearing a set of high-tech earplugs that are supposed to rival the big muffler-phones, the kind used at firing ranges and by air ground crews, in effectiveness; but he still winces if I forget to whisper, or make some other sudden loud noise. That seems to be pretty constant. He never seems to drop to normal with hearing.

He spits out any food we've tried to give him. I'll give him this; he really tries, but he just can't get it down. Ever tried to drink Nyquil and you're so grossed out by the taste and the smell that your gorge rises? It's like that. He spat out _Cream of Wheat_. He can't handle boiled potatoes. When the white food group is too much for your sense of taste, you know you've got trouble. Speaking of the white food group, I got him to drink a little milk this morning. For a minute I thought he was going to throw it up, so I poured distilled water down him to help get the taste out of his mouth, which seemed to take care of that. I've been thinking--taste and smell are so closely related. If I can find something that tastes to him the way frankincense smells...but all the things that are occurring to me have a lot of citric acid--vitamin C. Sharp-tasting. I don't think he could handle that.

He's still in there. He's fighting. There are a lot of indications of that--he does talk coherently, and he can usually manage to work with me for an hour a few times a day, while I guide him in meditations and teach him techniques that have worked for Jim, and which did seem to work for Alex, too. He refuses to make trips to the bathroom blind and naked, being led by the hand; we have the light level down in here--all the windows are blocked and we're going through emergency candles pretty quickly. (We can't use most of mine, they're scented.) So he takes the mask off, pulls on Jim's robe--which is lined with cashmere, may be the softest garment I've ever touched, and probably cost Jim a mint--and makes the trip himself. Once we had to blow out all the candles but the ones in the kitchen before he could come down the stairs.

But he's scared--Jesus, he's scared--and so are Jim and I, ready to weep with frustration, and it isn't even our senses going crazy, so how scared must Stephen be? I don't know if it's worse for Jim, or me--Jim knows that Stephen is going through something that he remembers made _him_ panic--scared him to the point of mindless aggression, pushed him to the point of despair...and Stephen, who has not had covert ops training, who's never even been in the army, who has had none of the experiences with his senses and just in general that Jim's had that gave him the coping tools to handle something like this--is going through what Jim remembers to a power of about three.

Jim cries, like, never--I've seen him leak a few tears, let out a few sobs, but nothing like serious crying, until this whole bit with Stephen and their thing started. He's actually cried a couple of minutes at a time more than once since then, and I see that jaw muscle jumping a lot under extremely bright eyes.

But since we brought Stephen home from the mountains where his senses kicked in, I've found Jim crying brokenly three times, and it's only been three or four days.

Me? I don't know what to do except keep on with what I'm doing and _try_ not to fall too far behind at the U. I started giving the wrong lecture one morning; thank God my students know I'm a grad student and operate on even less sleep than they do a lot of the time. I just said "Shit," sat down at the desk, put my head down on it and laughed when one of the girls up front pointed out my error, and when I did they all broke up and applauded. As far as I know nobody reported me for using the S-word in class.

Even with Jim, I was flying blind a lot of the time, using my own general experience, deductive ability, results of tests and observations, and a lot of hunches. Jim, like Alex, had enough of a handle on the senses not to go into instant meltdown, although they were both having serious problems, and would have wound up in a world of hurt if they hadn't found someone who could teach them control. Stephen...that's not his situation. He _is_ in a world of hurt, he's at the bad place they might have wound up in if they hadn't either found me or the senses hadn't remised. Hunches and theory aren't enough here. Stephen's in real, immediate pain and danger from his own body, and I can't give him much relief beyond common sense and the occasional syringe full of something he's going to wind up addicted to if I can't find an alternative.

God, I'm tired. Between dealing directly with Stephen, researching my own notes and journals as well as the stuff that was the only clue I had before meeting Jim, and taking those extra classes I owe Perce and Salome on top of my own, I've only gotten a few hours sleep here or there since the night I finally got to Stephen and Jim. If Jim's had any sentinel-related problems, he's pretty much been stuck dealing with them on his own. In this state, I wouldn't even _know_ if he were having problems, and that's a fucking nasty feeling for me. I do know this. Jim's overzealous protection instincts have tied this in with all the rest of Jim's guilt, and some part of him feels responsible for what's happening to Stephen right now.

The totally irrational part of that feeling is that hey, Jim was supposed to be the sentinel, the freak, the weirdo, and now it seems to his subconscious like he's contaminated his brother with it (as though Jim somehow deserves the stigma of being a freak, but Stephen is innocent and doesn't). For another, still irrational but with at least a note of logic to it, it was their trying to get each other back the way they used to be, in terms of honesty and closeness--and their success at it--that was the catalyst that broke the barrier that let the monster out of the cage.

I don't know what any of it means, and I'm too tired to think straight. And Stephen's whimpering. God, it sounds like the noises Jim's made when his hearing cuts out on him and he can't hear his own voice. I don't think he can hear any more.

And I don't think I can stand any more.

* * *

"Jim! Come up here, we've got another problem."

Jim pounded up the stairs to find Blair on the bed with Stephen, prying the earplugs out and saying "Grab his hands, I have to get these things. I think his hearing's finally cut completely out; he can't hear his own voice."

"Then should we take out the earplugs? If it comes back the same way it all hit before--"

"I'm hoping I can get it back up at normal. Touch him, his touch isn't spiking right now." As Jim at once settled to the bed and began to stroke his brother's arms and shoulders and chest, Stephen relaxed a bit. Blair removed the earplugs and dropped them in a dish of hydrogen peroxide by the bed. He touched the eyemask, gripping it lightly by Stephen's temple, and tugged lightly. Stephen immediately turned his head to let Blair pull the mask off.

His whole face squinched.

"Blow that candle out, Jim."

"Right." Jim did so, leaving the upper floor lit only by the faint light from the candles downstairs. He started to say "It's all right, Stephen, open your--"

Blair reminded him "Can't hear." Jim knew he'd probably never have the immediate grasp of which senses to appeal to during a bad cycle, a spike or a cutout; nor the automatic track-keeping that Blair always managed to do, no matter how frenzied and panicked the situation might be. "Touch him."

Jim leaned down and pressed his mouth against his brother's, lightly stroking his thumbs over the crushed-closed eyelids. He began to whisper "Open your eyes," against Stephen's cheek as the pressure of the thumbs grew a little more insistent against the bronze-brown eyebrows, prying at the muscles to relax them. "It's okay."

"You can do it," Blair murmured hopefully.

Stephen blinked, barely, then opened his eyes. Blair, half-clueless in the dark, was guided as to what was happening by the pale, vague shadows of Jim and Stephen's skin against the dimness. It seemed Stephen's eyes were open, because Jim sat back a little and sighed--

\--and was grabbed and pulled back down by Stephen for what at first looked like nothing more than an extremely in-depth kiss. Then the motions and sounds the brothers were making caused Blair to move in and look more closely; Stephen was holding Jim there with him, lips pressing sometimes, but the stroking of his tongue against Jim's own, and against his lips, nearly made Blair slap himself in the forehead. Stephen could _taste_ Jim without pain or nausea, because Jim's taste, to a sentinel, would probably be damn close to Stephen's own--nothing like the violent discordance of any kind of food or other substance against what was already there in Stephen's mouth. Sure, it was possible for there to be marked differences in the taste-smell of the various secretions of two siblings; but it was also likely that they'd be more similar than different from a sentinel's point of view. Too bad Jim hadn't kissed Stephen before since Stephen's senses kicked in. And lucky that Jim and Stephen could easily kiss each other on the mouth--since as far as they knew, human chemistry being what it was, it might be nowhere but Jim's mouth that the similarity existed. Also, Jim hadn't been eating much, another contributing factor to the taste and smell of his overall chemistry and particularly that of his mouth, and the rest of his digestive tract, being mostly Jim rather than Jim-and-food-essence.

"I gotta make a note of that," Blair sighed to himself, then turned his attention back to Stephen. Well, Stephen and Jim, since they seemed to be a contiguous unit at the moment. He decided to let them go at it for a while, since it was possible this could help ease Stephen's sense of taste out of the automatic spiking it had been doing on everything short of the air, and it would undoubtedly calm and comfort him, which could only be a help. Blair had taught Stephen certain signals, ones he'd used before with Jim when the latter's hearing had been fluctuating or cutting out, but Stephen hadn't known them long, and would be more likely to recognize and remember them if Jim could relax him a little first.

After a few moments, they were still but for deep, panting breaths, Jim's face resting against Stephen's, his hands moving gently over his brother's body. Stephen just clung to Jim's shoulders, his eyes presumably open. Blair wondered briefly how he was going to do this when he couldn't see any detail--he'd have to rely on Jim to tell him if Stephen was paying attention and responding or not. "Jim. Move so he can see me. We have to try and get his hearing back up--you're right, we can't just let it cut in at whatever volume."

"Yeah..." Jim began to pull back. Stephen clutched at him, and Jim redoubled his efforts at soothing. "It's okay," he murmured automatically, bringing one of Stephen's hands up to kiss. "Blair. Look at Blair." Jim gently pushed at Stephen's cheekbone to turn his gaze Blairward.

"Is he watching me, Jim?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. Stephen, watch my mouth." Blair mouthed the words slowly and carefully. "Watch what I'm saying. Can you understand me?"

"He's nodding."

"All right. I want you to keep your eyes focused on me," Blair said, reaching out to find Stephen's face in the dark, touching it lightly, using his other hand to mime gestures at his own eyes and ears, raising his forefinger in an "up" gesture. "We're going to bring your hearing back up..."

* * *

"Okay," Blair said, his voice gravelly in exhaustion. "One more time. We're going to take it all the way down to nothing, then bring it back up."

"Blair, I can't," Stephen whispered. His voice was weak and thready, from the screams he wouldn't let out clenching the muscles in his throat to the point his vocal apparatus balked on him. "I can't concentrate. I'm too tired. Let me sleep a while..."

"I don't want to give you another shot this soon."

"I can't...hold the image. The breathing's not helping, I can't--"

"You're doing really well, Stephen, but you need to relax--"

"I can't relax! When I relax, it..."

Blair sighed. What Stephen meant was that for the last three or four days he'd been the equivalent of a blind and deafened man being suddenly, randomly stabbed by hot pokers out of the silent darkness--but the blindness and deafness was his own helplessness, and the pokers were his senses, slamming pain through him with unpredictable spikes. There was no way in hell he could relax at this point without being drugged. If this kept up, the exhaustion alone, from the spikes and the lack of food, might wind up killing him. If he got that bad, there'd be no choice but to take him to the hospital where he could be IV'd and sedated, which was almost no choice at all in this case.

"Stephen, the stuff I'm giving you is potentially somewhat addictive, but the far more immediate problem is that I don't have an unlimited source of it. I got a friend of mine to write me prescriptions for certain things that help Jim in different ways, in case of emergency--I told her I was keeping the anthro department's field medical kits stocked. More than one more scrip or so, and she'll want to see some documentation that the drugs are going where I'm telling her they are. Steve--" Blair got out of his chair and knelt next to the bed, up by Stephen's head, and touched his head hesitantly. "Okay?"

Stephen knew he meant the touch. "Okay."

"We have to get this under control while you still have the strength to work with me. You don't keep food down very well under the Demerol, and you can't get it down at all without it. You're suffering from lack of sleep and the energy drain that goes with all constant pain. Our time window's getting smaller. If we have to take you to the hospital, God alone knows what might happen to you. You've heard the stories Jim's told about it."

"I know. I know. I know...just...don't give me the knockout shot. Try a lower dose. Something... that'll just let me get a few hours of sleep. I'll try to keep something down before it...before I..." Stephen, normally an energetic and vital man, seemed to have shrunken, though Blair knew his weight loss would be mostly water at this point. It was the total exhaustion that made the difference. Hell, nobody could concentrate in this condition. He was doing well just to form semantically correct sentences.

"Okay, Stephen. I don't like to do this, because the Demerol is the only thing we _know_ doesn't give you anomalous symptoms, but I'm going to give you a smaller dose mixed with an anti-emetic; it's a combination hospitals use for people who get nauseated by pain medication. Jim's taken this--he got an ear infection and was throwing up his lungs from the vertigo--and it didn't seem to hurt him; made him sleepy, but it does that to everyone. It might let you keep some food down and get some rest."

"Okay," Stephen stuttered, with a light shiver.

Blair went and prepared the shot, helped Stephen turn, cleaned a place on his hip with hydrogen peroxide--alcohol left red welts on him--and said "Hold on. Here it comes."

Stephen clenched the sheets in his fists. The sudden jabs, smooth and painless as Blair and Jim tried to make them, had precipitated touch spikes a couple of times. "Ready."

As quickly and efficiently as possible, Blair administered the shot, removed the needle, and gently rubbed the medication in. "Okay?"

Stephen's teeth chattered, with guywire-level tension more than cold. "Okay."

"Do you want the covers?"

"Not yet."

"I'll be right back. Do you have a flavor preference?"

"Vanilla."

"Right." Blair smoothed the older man's hair once and started down the stairs for a can of Ensure, and some more distilled water--this time with a tiny bit of lemon juice added. The flavor and the astringent effect were both a bit reminiscent of frankincense, and the juice would clear the powerfully sweet taste of the concentrated nutrition drink from Stephen's palate more quickly than plain water.

At least, Blair hoped it would. They hadn't tried it yet. Stephen had yet to get any food down but the mouthful of milk that almost came back up. The Ensure--a six-pack of which Blair had dragged out of his closet when it began to be obvious that if, by some miracle, Stephen managed to keep something down, they'd better make it something with more nutritional value than unsalted gruel--was Blair's; he kept cans of it in his office for marathon work sessions. Jim was out right now, picking up a list of items Blair had prepared just before Stephen went into his latest sensory cutout. That had been a couple of hours ago. Blair had gotten Stephen's hearing back up and helped him work the dial up and down a few times since then. Jim was probably having to range far afield to locate all the items on the list.

He came back up. "Still with me?"

"Yeah." The voice was barely a croak.

"Senses numbing up?"

"Yeah."

"I'm going to get you on the pillow, here...turn..." he helped Stephen get arranged such that his head was high enough to drink, but he was still horizontal enough, turned a little on his side, that he could fall forward on the mattress and spit/puke into the basin on the floor next to the bed if necessary.

"Like I said when I mentioned trying this stuff, it mostly tastes sweet, so I'm going to slide the straw as far back in your mouth as I can without gagging you, to see if we can avoid hitting the 'sweet' receptors at the tip of your tongue quite so hard. The straw for the lemon water's right here, you signal me when you need it...here we go...that's good...I know your throat's dry and it's hard to swallow--water, right, here...there we are...staying down?"

Stephen blinked blurrily. "So far."

"Wanna try for some more?"

Stephen nodded. Blair gave him the straw. "Good boy, Stevie...I think we're finally gonna get some food in you...here, water. How's the concentration of lemon juice? Too strong?"

"No. Fine...thirsty."

"No shock there. You're way dehydrated, man. It's damned hard to drink enough water to stay hydrated on a starvation diet without the sheer volume of water making you sick by itself. More shake, now...good...you're doing great, Stevie."

Stephen got most of the can of supplement down before he started balking at the straw. Blair let it go. "You haven't eaten in so long, we won't push it, it's okay...just a little more water...there you go. How's the shot kicking in? Feel any better?"

"Yeah. Tired." Stephen rolled helplessly to his back on the pillow, his eyes closing.

"I just bet you are," Blair sighed, "I just fucking bet you are, man. Relax and get some sleep. There anything you need first?"

Stephen's mouth curved into a ghost of a smile. "Can you run a line to the kitchen sink and hose me down? My hair feels gross." Fits of the sweats when he started feeling hot--which was most of the time, his system as agitated by the shocking pains as it was--left him, his hair, and the sheets soaking. They'd had to keep changing the sheets and dunking Stephen in the oatmeal-baths to keep him from stinking himself out as much as to soothe his skin. They hadn't ducked his head in the oatmeal soak, though; Jim would wipe his face and neck with a thick piece of old flannel dipped in the water instead. "And if I don't get a shave soon..."

"After you wake up, we'll see about having Jim take you in for a shower. Your senses should still be at least a little under control from the Demerol in a few hours. But if you sleep longer than that, we'll let you, you need the rest. If I have to, I can give you another quarter-dose when you wake up, long enough to get you clean." Being grody was one of the bigger downers to a bedridden patient's morale, Blair knew that from experience, and in Stephen's case, sponge bathing ran the risk of making his sense of touch spike if it was vigorous enough to be effective.

Blair sat on the edge of the bed, watching the other man relax slowly. The look, the shape, of his face--of his whole body--seemed to change, like in time-lapse photography, as the clenched muscles stretched across the framework of his bones eased. Some twitches and muscle bunchings remained, of course. And he'd probably be sore as hell all over when the shot wore off.

"God, I want to help you," Blair whispered, feeling his own exhaustion catching up with him in a rush, his eyes tearing slightly. "I swear I'm doing the best I can, Steve. Forgive me for not knowing how the _fuck_ to deal with this..." he leaned down and brushed his lips against Stephen's, sighed, and got up, moving around to the other side of the bed. He lay down on top of the coverlet, resting his head on the other pillow, and closed his eyes.

* * *

He wasn't sure, at first, what woke him; he got up, reached over and felt for Stephen in the candleless darkness. His heartbeat was steady, as was his breathing. Blair uncovered the luminous clock dial; they'd both slept for about three hours. Not much, but a hell of a lot better than nothing.

He groped his way downstairs, ruefully realizing, now that he had enough energy to worry about it, that he could damn sure use a shower himself. There were candles in glass holders still burning down here; there was one in the middle of the kitchen table with a note stuck conspicuously under it. Rubbing his eyes, Blair shuffled over to the table and tugged it free.

Jim had made his supply run and found most of the items, but a couple of things had required him to phone around to shops that might carry them. He'd stopped off at the apartment and left what he'd picked up so far, and gone back out to finish; from the time scribbled in the upper corner of the note, he'd just walked out the door, which was probably what had finally wakened Blair.

Dropping the note back on the table with a yawn, he went into the kitchen to rustle up some coffee. With Stephen still under the Demerol, Blair could probably get a pot made and largely drunk without reeking him out.

Go over the situation again, Blair...since the senses first hit, between three and four days ago-- about four, now.

He got the coffee started and went to the coffee table, where his laptop sat, and booted up.

Jim had described what, looking back at them, he had realized were early indicators of Stephen's emerging sentinel senses, which had started almost before they made it to the campsite. Blair had also gone over his own memories, including everything Stephen had done in Blair's presence that might have been the result of heightened senses of whatever kind. Unfortunately, while certainly interesting, none of that was definitive enough to be much help yet.

Jim had also described, in as much detail as he could manage--for which the poor red-faced lug deserved a medal, especially since he was describing it to his lover--the exact feelings and circumstances he had felt both in himself and in Stephen, through Jim's own senses, that led up to the moment Stephen's had kicked in. Blair, while leading Jim through a memory exercise that would provide as much detail to the account as possible, had repeatedly had to tell his dick something along the lines of "Stand down, boy, we are not here to feed your prurient fascination with Jim's relationship with his brother". Interesting, that data, for more reasons than the prurient--and possibly related to Stephen's never having manifested the senses until now. A prolonged period of time spent in primitive conditions was only one possible circumstance that might act as a catalyst for the reactivation of remised senses--it had also been true that Alex's being stuck in solitary confinement had done the same for her, and the only explanation Blair had for that was the _lack_ of stimulation to her senses had kicked them into high gear in an effort to keep her functioning. That would also explain the manifold expansion of Alex's senses in a primitive sensory deprivation tank.

But the block on Stephen's senses appeared to be related to an emotional barrier. Saying that when the barrier, or barriers, that kept him and Jim from feeling like they truly had each other back had fallen, the barrier on Stephen's senses had gone with it, was most likely too simplistic to be accurate. Still, the emotional connection, while not unprecedented--Jim's _attitude_ about his senses had affected their functioning more than once in the past--was interesting.

Unfortunately, Blair was horribly limited by the pathetically small sample of known, functioning sentinels he had to work with. His data on people with one or two heightened senses, though he'd been through it exhaustively, contained nothing obviously related to Stephen's situation and method of sense activation. And while most of the people in question knew they had had their ability in childhood, those who couldn't say one way or the other reported no particular trauma that would mark the time of the senses' activation. Certainly nothing like what Stephen was going through. Zoning was often reported, but in only a few cases had the victim considered the tendency to be a serious problem. Spikes were common but milder, and predictable to a degree.

Speaking of zoning. Stephen hadn't manifested two major symptoms that Jim and Alex had evinced in spades; the sharp pains related to different areas of the brain when a sense became overwhelming, and zones. Unless he'd done it when neither Jim nor Blair were looking, which was almost never, and then come out of it spontaneously, Stephen hadn't zoned once; and while he was sure as hell in pain, the localized headache stabs of an overstimulated sense seemed to be entirely absent.

None of this was to say that he might not zone or get a brain stab in the next ten minutes, but it was markedly odd that he hadn't, as overwhelming as the sensory stimuli obviously were to him.

Blair was typing. Hypothesis: Stephen was stuck in second, so to speak. The symptoms Alex and Jim had, those occurred while they were at what Blair was increasingly coming to think of as a more matured, controlled state--not perfect, but far enough along to make some use of the senses and go about normal business the better part of the time. Perhaps certain controlling reflexes were developed in childhood, and if one never had the chance to do that, one was left without an important coping mechanism when the senses did hit. Possible the brain pains and zones were connected with said reflexes in some way, perhaps with a malfunction therein.

Hypothesis: Stephen was simply an extraordinarily powerful sentinel, and the usual reflexes and autonomic coping mechanisms were there, but weren't sufficient. Hm. Maybe.

Hypothesis: Stephen's sentinel abilities were aberrant in some way, and he might never be able to control them, or at least never be able to use them the way Jim and Alex used theirs. Related hypothesis: Stephen's senses were just wacked, possibly due to a mutation of the sentinel gene that would also keep them from kicking in until later in life, and Stephen was not, technically, a potentially functional sentinel at all, any more than the heightened senses associated with schizophrenia or multiple sclerosis made their victims sentinels.

Maybe he was just royally fucked.

Blair shoved the computer away and rubbed his eyes. No sense going there yet. It had only been four days. Stephen, whatever else was going on, was an anomalous case for the simple facts of the time and method of his initial full activation; and you couldn't plot a curve from one point. He might be fine, eventually.

It wasn't as though Blair had a reliable way to test any of these hypotheses anyway. He could only follow his instincts. And it was crucial that Blair and Jim appear confident that Stephen _could_ learn to control his senses, even if only to the extent of keeping his dials turned down to normal all the time. Stephen wasn't a cop, after all. There was no reason for him to be overjoyed at the idea of being a walking Forensics lab, or being able to ID a shooter at distances far greater than the range of ordinary human eyes. Granted, enhanced senses could be _useful_ to almost anyone...

But if Stephen found himself compelled to join Jim in protecting the tribe, likely wouldn't be doing it as a law enforcer. There were all kinds of ways to use abilities like that for the greater good...

"Too tired to make sense, here..." Blair muttered, stumbling back into the kitchen for coffee. "He's still sick, concentrate on getting him better...I'm getting ahead of myself. I've gotta stop overthinking..."

He snorted. Right. And when Jim got home, Blair would ask him to put back the rain that was falling outside.

"Blair...? Blair!"

"Steve--I'm right here--coming." He remembered to set his coffee down as he hustled up the stairs. "How are you feeling?"

"Blind. Almost."

"Don't panic, it's dark. Let me light this...shit..." the lighter sputtered and finally the wick caught. "Keep your eyes averted until..." he paused. Stephen was staring at the candle. "Okay?"

Stephen looked up at him, eyes bleary. "Think so...still..." he blinked slowly.

"Shot's still making itself felt?" Blair sat down carefully on the bed next to him. "How's it all feeling?"

"Numb...not totally numb. Disorienting."

"I can imagine. Apparently the lower dose works, but we need to keep a close eye on you for when it wears off. It may also be the combination with the anti-emetic. Jim can have really nonsensical reactions to some drugs, even some foods, or no reaction at all."

Stephen nodded slowly. "While I'm...awake, and I can...and I can, I'd like to get cleaned up."

"Yeah--we really ought to wait for Jim, but I'm not sure when he'll be back, and we don't want to waste the opportunity, here. I know how weak you must be; do you think you can get down the stairs if you lean on me?"

"For a shower and a toothbrush I'll just fall over the guardrail," Stephen slurred, having to stop and gulp against the dryness of his mouth once.

"Okay, come on, we'll try. Careful...whoopsie, watch it...I'm going to walk ahead of you, brace myself on the rail, and you're going to lean your weight on my shoulders. We'll take it one step at a time. Don't look down, it might make you dizzy, just look at the back of my head..."

They ran into a problem about three minutes later.

"Blair, you're not getting into the shower with me."

"Then we have a situation on our hands, because you're not getting in there alone."

"Look, I have _no_ dignity left here after the last few days anyway, but I'd still like to at least wash myself without help if I can, and I can, but we don't know how long that's going to last. So please--"

"If I were an orderly or a care technician at the hospital, you wouldn't throw me out, would you?"

"You're not an orderly or a care technician, you're my brother's husband, for all practical purposes."

"So who should help you out if not family?"

"Blair...I haven't been alone for more than a minute at a time in four days--no, I'm _grateful_ for that. But I'd like to take the opportunity to breathe my own air for just a few minutes, okay? You've been packed in with no privacy a million times, you've had health care workers constantly in your face, you know what I mean. Just give me a few minutes. Check on me in five. If I'm fine, check me in another five. Really, if you think you're scared of what's happening to me, look at it from my point of view--I wouldn't ask this if I didn't really think I'd be all right. I do _not_ intend to take a chance on being alone if I think I might suddenly go blind or get hit with a spike."

Blair stewed a moment, then said "Okay. But remember; lukewarm water, and use the electric razor, not a blade. If your touch spikes shortly after a regular blade shave it'll literally feel like your face is on fire; ask Jim. The Tom's of Maine unflavored is in the cabinet. And I _will_ be checking on you every five minutes, and I'm leaving the door open."

"Yeah, fine. Um, Blair...I just wanted to say thank you. I know I've been doing a lot of whining..."

"If anybody has the right to whine, it's you right now. Don't worry about it."

"I'm still asking a hell of a lot of you. Jim, I can see, he's my brother, but--"

"--but I'm your friend. And Jim loves you; I love him. And for that matter, I love you, too. Now go wash your hair; I don't like the way it's looking at me." Blair stood on tiptoe and pecked Stephen's cheek, then arranged the candles on the toilet tank so they'd be sure not to get hosed down or knocked off; then he ducked out the door, which he did leave open.

He paused and turned; the candles shed enough light that he could see Stephen pulling Jim's robe off, and while he was staying on his feet, he was also moving like an octogenarian. He picked up the new toothbrush and fumbled in the cabinet for the toothpaste, evidently (and probably wisely) intending to kill as many birds as possible with one stone. When he had to catch himself against the sink, Blair almost called the whole business off and went back in, but Stephen started the shower and got in without dropping anything, closed the door okay, and desultory splashing noises could be heard from behind it.

Then; "Wait--Blair--"

Blair started to pound back in, in a panic. "I'll be right--"

"--I can't see in the candlelight. Which one is the sensitive-skin baby shampoo?"

Blair caught himself on the door lintel, wilting. "In the caddy, on the right," he sighed in an excess of adrenaline dispersal.

"Where...here. Thanks."

"No problem."

Blair went back out to the front room and located his coffee, which was still adequately warm, and had a sip just as a knock sounded at the door.

Shit. He went up to the door and peered through the peephole. Double shit. A worried detective. "Brian, I told you it's not a good--"

"Blair, you sounded like death on a cracker over the phone when you called to cancel, a lot worse than could be accounted for by the fact that you've been looking forward to that concert since I got tickets two months ago. Ellison's dropped off the face of the earth, Banks is chain-smoking cheap Havanas and ripping the nads off all and sundry, and nobody can get through to you or Jim either one even though we know you haven't left town. Connor is checking out surveillance equipment--under false pretenses--even as we speak. Would you rather deal with me or her?"

Blair was actually torn for a minute, since Megan knew about Jim, and could presumably be safely told about Stephen as well. "If I let you in here, Jim is going to kick _both_ our asses when he gets home."

"Kick this. If you _don't_ let me in there, I'm going to show you a trick for kicking in doors without the advantage of weight or momentum."

"You wouldn't."

"I'm a heartbeat from taking this knob off, and fuck the paperwork. Open the damn door."

"If I let you in and give you the rough picture, will you let well enough alone and tell everybody in the department to do the same?"

Blair could practically hear Rafe's cognitive synapses clicking on the other side of the door.

"We're not talking about anything illegal, are we?"

"No."

More clicking. Then: "All right. Tell me what's wrong and I'll fade into the woodwork. You won't see me again until you call me. I can do my best with everybody at the station, but that's all I can promise there."

Blair paused, chewing his lip.

"I'm worried, cute stuff," Rafe said softly. "Whatever this is, it's got to be bad. You can gut-shoot Ellison and he doesn't take off work, and like I said, even Banks is crazy."

"Just remember your promise," Blair said grimly, and pulled the chain, opening the door.

Brian, London Fog aswish, took one step into the room and stopped. "Fuck. Somebody's dead."

"No! No one's dead. The candles...um...it's complicated."

"That much I could figure. I _am_ a detective. Blair--" Brian reached up and tilted Blair's chin to the light of the candle on the table by the door. "Jesus. I shouldn't have called you cute stuff. You look like shit."

"Well, thanks, you look edible as usual," Blair grumped at his friend, pulling away to wander over to the kitchen table and have a seat.

"I mean you look like you _feel_ like--screw it, Blair, just tell me what's going on."

"Coffee?" Blair said listlessly.

"Yeah. I'll get it myself. You just talk." Brian fumbled in the cabinet in the dimness for a mug. "Start with the blocked windows and the candles. Not one of your rituals?"

"No. Um, it's Stephen."

"Jim's Stephen."

"Yeah."

"What about him needs blocked windows and candles?" Brian came back with a cup of coffee and sat down in the kitchen chair to Blair's left, his back to the door. He reached over and slid a hand across Blair's forearm, clasping it gently.

"He needs the blocked windows. _I_ need the candles. Stephen's showing seriously harsh signs of a very rare neurological condition that runs in Jim's family; sometimes normal light levels are too bright for him. Brian, he doesn't want this getting out; you know the kind of sharks the man deals with on a daily basis. He can't afford any perceived weaknesses in his position."

Brian nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah; I see that. I take it he's the one in the shower?"

"Mm. Speaking of which, 'scuse me, I've gotta check on him, make sure he's still okay. He's, um, medicated at the moment, but it's hard to say when it will wear off. Be right back."

"Siddown, you look like--well, you know. _I'll_ check on him." Blair started to get to his feet, protesting, but in his pooped condition Brian's hand on his shoulder was more than sufficient to plunk him back down in the chair. "Stay, cute stuff. You know I have a sister with MS and MS-induced seizures; I know what I'm doing. Stephen?" Brian was already halfway to the bathroom. "Knock, knock, it's Brian. Blair says we need to make sure your medication's holding up--"

Blair was up again, chasing behind him, grabbing for his arm. "No, Brian, let me--"

A thud, a crash and a frightened howl came from the shower stall. Hell, the shot was wearing off and the sudden shock had thrown him into another spike--Blair tried, but he was tired, and Brian was a cop, so exhaustion tripped Blair, and instinct got Brian to the shower in a heartbeat. He yanked the door open and Stephen literally fell out on him.

"He's having a seizure--what kind of disorder is it? Has he got some kind of benzo anticonvulsant? Klonopin? Dilantin? Never mind, just grab a towel, we need to get him somewhere he can't hurt himself--" to Blair's amazement, Brian--who had automatically crouched to catch Stephen--had risen with the other man in his arms, even though Brian was Stephen's height but closer to Blair's weight.

Rafe was moving, so, rather than argue, Blair grabbed towels and Jim's robe and followed. Brian was backing through the door of Blair's room, back ramrod-straight, turning in a slow pivot and going to one knee to set Stephen on the futon. "Wait," Blair said hastily, and spread the cashmere-lined bathrobe end-to-end over the coverlet. "Okay, put him down. How did you get him up without getting him on your shoulders...?"

Brian answered shortly, easing Stephen down, "Just a trick of balance. My aunt Laine was a strongwoman with Ringling Brothers. Now what do we--sshh," he said suddenly, seizing Stephen's wrists and trying to ease closed fists away from tearing eyes, suddenly getting half-up on the futon to use his weight to keep Stephen from curling up in a ball. "Your eyes? Okay, keep 'em closed, just try to relax, come on...shhh..." Brian's voice was deep and soft, sounding suddenly a hell of a lot older than he looked. He got Stephen's wrists in one hand--bizarre again; Stephen in a fit ought to be able to pull out of the more slender Rafe's grip even with _one_ hand, let alone both--and pushed dripping hair back from the other man's forehead. "Shh, now, I know...you can't help it...we're right here...Blair," he asided, quick and low, "twist up one of those towels and get it in his mouth so he doesn't bite himself."

Blair was motionless a bare second, staring in unfeigned amazement, because Stephen _was_ relaxing. Rafe's free hand was still rubbing slow circles on Stephen's temple, stroking his hair. "It's okay...I've got you...Blair!" Brian hissed in a whisper. "Let's have that--"

"He won't need it," Blair murmured quickly. "He doesn't bite himself. It's...a kind of seizure, but not that kind."

"What do you usually do for him?"

"Nothing that's been this effective," Blair muttered, barely audible. He made himself move and began gently swabbing Stephen down with one of the towels he was holding. "Here, Brian, put this under his head, try to dry him off a little."

"Shouldn't I hold him? If he goes into a grand mal, he could hurt himself or one of us."

"No, he'll be okay now..." Stephen's breathing had evened out, and in the evening overcast dimness glowing faintly through the window--the only uncovered one in the apartment--Stephen's eyes were open, glistening with unshed tears, but gazing up at Rafe without any evidence of pain. Blair added "You can let go of his arms. Just keep touching him and talking to him."

Brian did, using a combination of firm squeezes on muscled shoulders, gentle strokes to face and neck, and vague, general reassurances, spoken in a hypnotic voice Blair had never heard coming from Rafe.

Blair got Stephen dried off and covered with a soft cotton blanket. He'd like to have moved the damp bathrobe out from under him, but by the time he thought of it there was no way he was going to risk disturbing Stephen.

Because for the first time in four days, Stephen was sleeping. He wasn't drugged, he wasn't in an unresponsive stupor...he was peacefully asleep.

* * *

"Okay," Rafe said as Blair closed the door of his room behind them. "Start talking. Why the hell isn't that man in the hospital? He needs professional care."

"Because that's one of the most dangerous places he might wind up--"

"Why would the _hospital_ be dangerous? Is there something going on here you don't want the authorities to know? Jesus, he's not strung out, is he? That'd be so un-Stephen."

"No, he's not strung out...but there is something we don't want the authorities, or anyone else, to know. No, I told you, it's nothing illegal...hell." Blair slumped, wandering over to the kitchen table and plopping listlessly down. "I really don't know what to do, here, Brian. I really don't. I don't have any idea how you knew to do what you did, and I don't have any idea why it worked so well, but if Stephen's going to have any kind of shot of coming out of this alive, he's going to need all the help he can get. And for whatever reason, your help seems to have a far more immediate and pervasive effect than mine or even Jim's."

"I told you--Carol. The lesions in her brain give her crossfiring synapses, and she winds up with an effect that's very like epilepsy. Sometimes her senses seem to be going crazy--she gets kind of a too-much-information cycle started up and she winds up curled in a ball. Almost any stimulus can do it. Certain sounds, vibrations, looking out the window of a moving car. I've been talking her down from it, calming the super-stimulation, for years."

"That still doesn't explain why it worked here, but we'll worry about that later. Brian...I'm going to tell you something in strict confidence and I don't want you flipping out on me, okay? It's something Simon and Megan already know."

"If it's such a secret, why did you tell them?"

"We didn't. They figured it out, separately. I need to know if you're willing to do something for us. It's a big damn favor, so you need to be as prepared as possible when I ask it."

"Blair, you can always ask. If I can't do what you want me to, maybe there'll still be some way I can help."

"Have a seat. I have to grab a few things..."

* * *

"Well, shit. That sure explains Jim."

"What do you mean?"

"We were all sure he was psychic or something. I've seen him fire his gun at a closed door and nail some gun-toting suspect on the other side right between the eyes even if there's no _way_ he could have seen the guy. He can sniff out bombs better than Joel's dogs. And it's absolutely impossible to keep a secret from him."

"Well, actually that's not impossible, but it's tough as hell to manage."

"And this is happening to Stephen now?"

"Yeah, but Stephen's not like any case I've ever seen. All his senses are affected, so we've been assuming he's a sentinel, but there are a _lot_ of anomalous factors." Blair launched into an explanation of said factors as he got up to refill his mug.

Brian interrupted at one point, asking "Okay, so you're Jim's...what'd you call it...'guide'."

"That's right. A sentinel needs one to act as kind of a ground, and to watch his back when he's concentrating too hard to be aware of his surroundings. Kind of an all-around coach and partner. The senses can be so encompassing, a sentinel can wind up...drifting free, losing contact with the larger picture. I know of one that happened to. I tried to help her, but..."

"Alex Barnes. Or as Connor would say, the skin freak."

Blair looked at him, startled.

"I'm a _detective_ ," Brian reminded him tiredly. "There are a lot of things it would explain. Okay, so Jim and Stephen are sentinels, and you're their guide."

"Well...I'm Jim's guide. I've been working with Stephen, yeah, because there hasn't been a lot of choice--he needed my help. But we've established in the past four days or so that even after we get Stephen under control--assuming we can--I can't guide them both. There's a reason Jim and I are joined at the hip over and above the fact that we're lovers. A sentinel needs a guide in order to function safely--if I can't be around, Jim can't use his senses as effectively, because of the danger of spikes or zones that could get him or someone else killed. He does use them without me, but it's not as safe."

"So you're saying you need somebody to take care of Ste..." Brian's eyes widened.

"Um, yeah, I was getting around to that," Blair said uncomfortably. "Brian...he needs you. He could lose his mind. He could _die_. And if he dies, I think it would kill Jim, too."

"You want me to...for how long?"

"I don't know. I don't know how long he might need you."

"Why _me_?"

"Because for all my years of work with Jim, everything I know by now, I've barely been able to keep Stephen from self-destructing. You'd think that of all the candidates for a guide, I'd be the obvious front runner, but it's just not working like that. We're making progress, but I don't know if we're making it fast enough to save him before it's too late. Whereas you--you touched him and spoke to him, and that sight spike vanished like it had never been. His senses all calmed down, and he was able to fall asleep for the first time in four days without my giving him a hip full of Demerol. I don't know what it is--something genetic, the fact that you have a sister who suffers from something that superficially resembles out-of-control sentinel senses--I don't have enough data to figure that out right now. But when I saw the way he was looking at you, like he'd never seen you before..." Blair shook his head. "He finds you attractive, he's said as much, but this was definitely more than that."

"I find him attractive too, but that's hardly the point, is it? You're not suggesting I ask him out, you're suggesting I handcuff myself to the guy."

"Not forever. Jim and I don't _have_ to be joined at the hip any more unless we want to be--"

"And how long did it take to bring about _that_ circumstance?"

Blair bit his lip and looked away. "In Jim's case, it took a couple of years. But Stephen is different. I really have no way to tell how long it'll be before he has that kind of control."

"Blair. I'm a cop. I have a job and a partner and a _life_. You really expect me to just...give it up at the drop of a hat? On your say-so and nothing more?"

"No, of course not. Stephen wouldn't put up with being responsible for wrecking your life. But Brian, I wouldn't kid or obfuscate or anything else about something like this. Stephen. Is. _Dying_. It's taking a while, but it's happening. But you can save him. That's what you do, isn't it? Save lives? Rescue people in distress? How is saving Stephen any less important than shooting that holdup man's gun out of his hand during the A &P robbery, or helping that little boy you rescued from the elevator shaft last week?"

"The little boy didn't propose marriage to me after I saved him."

"I'm not proposing you marry Stephen, either. Just help him while he needs you. You guys are friends. I know you, Brian. Well enough to know that you don't let your friends down."

Brian slumped. "You really know how to stick it to a guy, cute stuff."

"Does that mean you'll do it?"

"It means I'll think about it. What am I gonna tell Banks? Find H another partner, I'm off to be a guide? For that matter, what would I tell H? I tell him everything, Blair. I go getting secretive on him now, and you'll have a very big, determined, and efficient detective breathing down _both_ your sentinels' necks as well as down mine."

"Maybe...tell him you're taking a leave of absence. To...travel, or start a home for unwed goldfish, or do volunteer work overseas, hell, we could come up with something. If you're worried about your financial picture, Jim and Stephen--"

Brian waved that off. "Since my uncle died I've got more money than I can figure out ways to squander. That's not the issue. Being a cop is what I _am_ , it's what I do, it's the thing that matters most in life to me--"

"Will you just _listen_ to me for a minute? Jim and I are still around, you won't be taking care of Stephen all on your own. I'd have to stick close anyway, to teach you the things you'll need to know."

"How can you be so sure it's me? Maybe he's just finally getting a handle on this. Maybe he was due to be able to come out of a fit, whaddaya call it, a sensory spike, on his own, and I just happened to be touching him at the time."

"No way. You saw him, Brian. There's no way he could just suddenly do a turnaround like that from the bottom of hell's well, which is where he's been stuck ever since the senses kicked in, up in the mountains. Unless I dope him up, that is. And now he's in there sleeping like a baby, comfy. The only differing factor in the situations is you. It's got to be you, Brian."

"Well, maybe you could find someone else he responds to like that. I mean, I can't be the only--"

"Oh, right. Where? What would I do, place an add? Tell the world? This is too fucking unlikely a lucky break to believe somebody else who can help Stephen is just gonna walk through that door, and since I don't know what it _is_ about you that makes it work, I can hardly go looking for anybody. I'm telling you, not even _Jim_ can--" he broke off as the front door opened and Jim walked in, carrying a brown paper bag, saying "Not even Jim can what? And why..." Jim set the bag down, with a little toss of his head at Brian, looking the question at Blair.

"Blair's trying to sell me on the idea of being Stephen's guide," Brian said dryly.

Jim's eyes came wide open and he whirled on Blair. "You _what_?"

"Jim, listen for a minute. Stephen was having a massive spike, and when Brian touched him and talked to him, got him focused like I do with you, it vanished--and all his other senses leveled out, too. He's in my room, sleeping, _without_ the aid of a syringe full of narcotics. The first real sleep he's had in four days--"

"How much have you told him?"

"Everything," Blair said emphatically. "So don't even think about damage control at this point. We need Brian, Jim. Stephen needs him. We can't...save him...alone." He glared up at his partner.

Jim met that penetrating blue gaze for a moment, blinked and took a deep breath, then turned to Brian. "Um...look, Rafe, I'm just as surprised as you are, here...and I don't know if you...see, it's just that Blair is usually right about this stuff. If he says Stephen really needs you, then it's a pretty sure bet that he does."

"Blair about has me convinced that _that_ much is true. But I don't know if I..."

"Yeah. Um, I know what it'd mean, what an imposition it would be, and I hate to ask it of you...but he's my brother. I love him more than...Brian, if you can save him, please..." Jim's voice trailed off. Unaccustomed to begging, he shuffled uncomfortably from foot to foot.

Which proved too much for Brian. Coming from Blair, this all sounded pretty wacked--but if Brian had ever met a skeptical hardass in his life, it was Jim. His obviously long-standing acceptance of Blair's authority and trustworthiness in this area--and, just as much, seeing said Hardass Ellison reduced to this state...

He slumped in his chair. "Okay, I'll help. But we'll wait and see whether I need to take any kind of lengthy leave from work. I'm not ready to promise to do that yet."

"That's okay," Blair said, suddenly flinging himself on Brian, squeezing the taller man tight. "Thanks, man, you have no idea, God, I was losing my mind--I really don't know what we'd have done--"

"Yeah, yeah, take it easy, cute stuff," Brian said, standing to peel Blair off gently, but giving him a shy smile in the process. "I'm not Mahatma freaking Ghandi. If I needed Stephen this bad, he'd give me a hand, wouldn't--" the words cut off as Jim moved in and hugged him, too. Speechless, Brian could only hang on to the Rodinesque body suddenly wrapped around him. Jim? Hugging? Blair, maybe, but...

"Thanks, Brian," Jim whispered. "You have no idea..." his voice trailed off.

Rafe gulped. "Um, sure. Don't mention it. What are friends for and all that...you okay, Jim?"

Jim released him, wiping perfunctorily at his own eyes. "Yeah. Fine. Just been having a waterworks problem since Stephen...since this started. Guess it's taking it out of me in a way that getting shot doesn't."

* * *

They relocated to Brian's place, because it was larger; four grown men knocking around a midsized loft apartment for what looked like it could be the indeterminate future was at least one too many. Brian lived in an old Victorian house, which, with almost all the furnishings and such contained therein, had been part of his inheritance from his uncle. It was in an older, tree-filled, quiet neighborhood near the Sound. Moving all Blair's sentinel-safe gear and supplies over there was a laugh and a half; moving Stephen himself was easier, since he was out of it, mostly, too unresponsive for his senses to endanger him on the trip. But he could hang on to someone when told to, so Jim, waving the other two off, picked him up and carried him.

Blair insisted on emptying out and thoroughly sentinel-proofing one of the bedrooms for Stephen; while he was doing that, Stephen was in Rafe's bedroom, resting under the influence of the drug combination that had numbed him up most recently. Brian would check on him periodically, making sure to touch him for a few moments each time, at Blair's insistence, though Brian opined under his breath that it hardly mattered as long as the man was unconscious.

Blair caught it. "Doesn't matter. Sentinels aren't wired quite like the rest of us. Demerol or not, I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that he's aware of you even in his sleep, so touch him," Blair reemphasized, before turning his attention back to cleaning the hardwood floor of what would be Stephen's room with reasonably sentinel-safe wood soap.

Brian was just coming back into the kitchen from such a check as Jim was turning off his cellphone. "How'd it go?"

"Simon is not pleased to lose you too, to say the least, but he backed off when I made the point of it being my brother's life at stake. In fact, he's even now coming up with something to tell H that'll keep him away from here--"

"I'll call him and tell him Carol's sick and needs me for a few days. If we tell him _I'm_ sick, there'll _be_ no keeping him out of here. If this goes on longer than that...well, we'll deal with that when it happens." Rafe picked up the cordless that was sitting on the bar. "You know, Henri desperately needs a couple of kids to take care of, keep him from doting on _me_ like a favorite nephew...I just noticed the time. We should be thinking about sleep, especially you two warmed-over rigor mortis types."

"No argument from here. We'll let Blair get done and get Stephen moved. Blair's going to want you to sleep with Stephen, you realize."

"I guess that only makes sense, if I'm the magic pill that keeps the nasties away from him. If he loses it in the middle of the night...you and Blair can take my bed; the other two spare beds, the canopied ones? They're nice to look at, but their mattresses must've died sometime during the Eisenhower administration, and I haven't gotten around to replacing them."

"I don't like to put you out of your room..."

"Hardly matters if I have to stay with Stephen anyway. H? Hi, it's me. Yeah, I know...yeah...look, you're going to have to finish that one up without me. Carol's having a flare...no, nothing unusual, she'll be okay, but she's going to need me for a while...that's all right, a neighbor's house-sitting for me. Right. Probably by Thursday...Carol's out of the hospital tomorrow, so I'll stop by and pick up that paperwork in the morning...sure. See you, H." He clicked off. "Now the only thing to worry about is: What if Carol _does_ have a flare?"

"Is it likely to happen?"

"No, not really. Be a hell of a coincidence, if nothing else."

"Then let's not borrow trouble. If it happens, we'll make sure everyone's taken care of somehow."

* * *

Brian felt Stephen stirring behind him and rolled over to face him. Rain was still whispering softly against the heavily curtained, gabled windows. One set of curtains was open so that Brian could get around without killing himself; the nighttime light from a single uncovered window wouldn't seriously endanger Stephen and his eyes. Brian put his hand on Stephen's smooth, tanned shoulder, touching him, as per Blair's instructions. "Hi," he murmured.

Stephen blinked and turned his head toward the touch, his eyes focusing slowly. "Where...?" he cleared his throat and tried again. "Where am...?"

"At my place. Remember the ride over here at all?"

Stephen started to shake his head, then paused and muttered "Jimmy carried me...down in the elevator..."

"That's right. Then he carried you into the house."

"Why...with you...?"

"I'm your spike preventative. Apparently there's something about me that makes your senses calm down and level out in a way that Blair hasn't been able to."

"They told you...?"

"Yep. Pretty much everything. When he saw what happened when I touched you, Blair drafted me into the guide brigade."

"I remember that. Your voice. Your...face..." his eyes closed again briefly, then he opened them again. "Like music. Like water in the desert."

Brian felt his cheeks flushing a little. "Um. Thanks, I guess. I'm glad it helps."

Stephen sighed, eyes closing again. "Thought I was losing my mind. Thought I _had_ lost it. Thought I wasn't going to make it, and I didn't even care any more...dying would've been easier...until you..."

"No charge," Rafe said softly. "How do you feel now?"

"Like roadkill. Like I could sleep for a week."

"What do you think woke you up? Do you need Blair? Another shot?"

"No. Listening...to a heartbeat." He focused his eyes on Brian again. "Yours. Steady. Soothing..." he reached over and set his palm flat to Brian's smooth, bare chest. Brian felt a pleasant tingle at the contact. God, Ellisons were a sexy bunch. Even this one, who currently looked like he'd been peeled off the bottom of a dumpster, could do things to his anatomy that left him desperately running over the Jags' schedule and scores for the last couple of seasons (which was somewhat depressing). Having very recently been all over Stephen while he was wet and naked might have had something to do with that. The guy had obviously been stepping up his workouts.

Rafe cleared his throat and asked "Think you could sleep some more? It's been a pretty harsh week for you. You need the rest."

"I don't think so. I'm _starved_."

Brian sat up, regretting the loss of Stephen's hand against his chest. "You're hungry? That's great, Blair told me to wake him if you--"

"No, don't. Let him get some rest. He must feel nearly as dead as I do."

"Well...he'll probably kick my ass for this, but okay. I'll head down to the kitchen and fix you something; Blair's got the fridge stocked with stuff he says should be safe for you, if you can get it down."

"Sounds good. I don't think I'd better try to tackle a staircase right now."

"Me neither." Brian got up, dressed only in silk boxers, not failing to notice the avid gaze that followed him until he could get his bathrobe on. He felt thoroughly naked and very aroused under that regard, and found himself willing away an incipient erection. 'Don't get your hopes up, Brian--he's at least as enamoured of your ability to get his senses under control as anything else. He'd probably look at a hypo of morphine the same way.' "I'll be right back. Don't move."

"Don't worry."

Brian came back up with a soft-cheese sandwich on white bread, a glass of milk, and a bottle of Theragran-M. "Here, eat first, then take the vitamin. Blair says it might upset your stomach otherwise."

"Right."

Brian set the tray down on the bed table, then helped Stephen struggle more-or-less upright against the pillow, tucking another one behind him.

"You're good at this," Stephen smiled, tearing a bite out of the sandwich and managing to talk with his mouth full without looking uncouth. Neat trick. "Ever consider a career as a nurse?"

"No. The working conditions suck and the pay is for shit."

"That's pretty much what I told Jim when he asked me the same thing."

Brian sat down on the end of the bed. "So you and Jim were out camping when this thing hit?"

"Yeah."

"Does Blair know what caused it?"

Stephen busied himself with his sandwich a minute, swallowed, and said "Um...yeah. But not...not everything, he hasn't had time to think much about it. Jim and I...we...we've been trying to get it back to good, after so long apart, and...hell. I probably should ask Jim about this first, but if you're going to be as close to us both as..." he made a vague gesture that took in himself, Rafe and the bed, "...as you're obviously going to be, you're going to find it out eventually. Better to tell you now than have you walk in on something."

Brian's smooth brow furrowed. "I don't understand. 'Walk in'?"

"Yeah." Having said that, Stephen devoted himself to the sandwich until it was only a few crumbs, took the vitamin with the rest of his milk, and set the tray on the bed table. "Jim and I...you know we...had a...hell. Jim and I were lovers."

Absolutely no change of expression on Brian. Then he blinked. "What?"

"You heard me."

Long silence.

"Oh," Brian said, feeling like he'd just climbed a staircase in the dark and took that final not-there step hard enough to stagger him good. "I. Um." Swallow. "See."

"Yeah," Stephen sighed. "It was good, be clear about that. Nothing forced on either side. We were just in love, and we acted on it as often as humanly possible. When my senses hit, Jim and I...were letting the last of the barriers go, the ones that kept us apart for so long, and as it happened, we were...well...fooling around."

"Fooling around."

"As in having sex, yeah, though we didn't manage to get too far before suddenly, every nerve ending I had was screaming in agony. Fortunately, Blair and his magic hypo arrived shortly after that. He'd figured out what was going on with me, and he knew that my senses might be becoming active."

"You and Jim."

"Yeah, me and Jim. And so they take me home, and up starts the fucking _longest_ four days of my fucking _life_. Thank God you showed up. I don't think I'd have lasted much longer."

"Fooling around. You and Jim."

Stephen sighed. "Yeah, me and Jim. Are you gonna be all right with this, Brian?"

"You and Jim."

"Me and Jim. Naked as jaybirds. Doing the wild thing. Yep."

Brian got up and went to the window, unhitching the catch and swinging it open. Cool mist rolled over his skin.

"Brian? You okay? I know, a lot of people would be really grossed out, but I was kind of hoping...I mean, I really do need you, and...I just didn't want you to find out some other way--"

"This is such a fucking turn-on I think my dick's about to explode."

Stephen's sentence lurched to a halt. He gulped. "Oh. Well...I guess it could be worse, then, right? I mean, you aren't grossed out or anything at least. Are you? It'd be hard to be grossed out and turned on by the same thing at once, but I guess if--"

Stephen's flabbergasted babbling was cut off by Brian's words. "I'm not grossed out. I'm so horny I can feel my pulse in my _teeth_ \--"

"Yeah, I can hear your heart, it's really doing the cha-cha over there--"

"--and _that_ , I will admit, is causing me to freak out a little. I mean, I never figured incest for a kink of mine. I've seen too many victims of abuse. Do you have any idea what it can _do_ to people?"

"Yeah, actually, I do. It's hideous. But in our case it wasn't abuse, and it's not a kink to us. Jim and I never saw it that way. We knew _other_ people would see it that way if they found out, but to us it was just...just love."

Brian just stood at the window and breathed for a bit, then said quietly "You guys are full of surprises, aren't you?"

"I'm sorry. I didn't think about how it might be kind of an overwhelming notion, piled on top of what you've had to get your mind around already today. I just didn't want you to walk in on Jim and I in a clinch and have a heart attack on the spot."

"Oh God." Brian swayed. "Don't say things like that. I'm about to come in my shorts already."

"Oh. Um. I'm, uh. I kind of like that idea, actually."

Brian turned at the window. "What idea?" he wondered, panting lightly, reaching back to grasp the sill to steady himself. "Me coming in my shorts?"

"You coming in any way, shape or form, especially as a result of being turned on by the idea of me and Jim together," Stephen said in a rush, then gulped again. 'Jesus. Talk about overwhelming the guy. I'm gonna be lucky if he ever touches me again at this rate.'

"Oh God," Brian murmured again, his feverishly glowing eyes closing briefly. "No busting moves on sick people, Brian. No busting moves on sick people. No busting moves on sick people..."

"I'm not really sick now. Thanks to you. Just tired. But if you should happen to feel like busting anything after I get some more sleep--and a shave, I must look like a Skid Row reject...just, um, feel free."

"What about Jim? Hell, what _about_ Jim--does Blair _know_ about this?"

"Yeah. He's all for it. Wants me and Jim to have each other back the way we used to be--and we pretty much have that now. And all the feelings that went with it."

"Oh, sweet Jesus," Brian whispered, turned back to the window and hung halfway out of it, dampening himself thoroughly in the cool mist.

"Like I said, I'm, um, sorry," Stephen repeated. "I hope this doesn't...I hope you aren't too rattled to...to guide me, now. I'd have waited, but I didn't want..."

"I know, I know, you didn't want me finding out by stumbling across you and Jim sucking on each other's tonsils OH man, I am losing it here." He was still hanging out of the window, breathing in the mist in great panting breaths.

'God, what a beautiful ass,' Stephen found himself thinking. At that point, Brian straightened up and pulled the window closed, running his hand through his hair and starting for the door. "I'll be right back. You just...just don't go anywhere."

"No problem. What are you..."

"The bathroom. Cold shower. Very, very cold shower." He vanished into the hallway.

Stephen, automatically following Brian's movements with his hearing--when the hell had he learned to do that?--listened as Brian's robe slithered to the tiled floor of the upstairs bathroom, followed by the featherlike whuff of a pair of silk boxer shorts. The pipes clonked and the shower came on. This was closely followed by a strangled noise of extreme discomfort. "Jesus _fuck_ ," Brian gasped. Stephen listened to Brian's movements and gasping breaths until the water shut off. Then there came some unidentifiable thuds and bangs, and then Brian was back, damp, in his robe again, carrying a folded cot-with-mattress and a stack of linen.

"What's that for?" Stephen wondered.

"Me. There is no way in hell I'm going to get any sleep lying in that bed next to you, but I need to be nearby, at least."

"Then I'll take the c--"

"You'll stay right there. You need a soft mattress a lot worse than I do right now. I sleep on this thing all the time when I go camping." Brian was quickly and efficiently setting the cot up and putting the sheets on it.

"I'm sorry about this, Brian..."

Rafe's hands stilled for a moment. "Look, what's been happening to you makes what's been happening to me look like a party. I'll be fine, Stephen. Don't get stressed over my state of mind; you can't afford the extra grief right now."

There was a pause; then Stephen essayed, in a near-whisper, "Um...Brian..." the words came out so hesitantly Rafe stilled again, saying, in the soothing voice he'd used to calm Stephen's earlier sight spike, "It's okay. Tell me."

"If I'm pushing, just forget I said anything, but...aren't you supposed to be touching me some way or other? That's why Blair wanted you with me, isn't it?"

Brian tilted his head a moment, his penetrating but normal-capacity eyes trying to focus on the shadow that was Stephen, the slight bronzey highlights visible in his hair in the faint light from the windows. "Are you afraid?" he asked softly.

"Yeah. I am. I never thought of myself as a coward, but you have no idea what I've been going through the last four days."

Brian was still a moment, then said quietly "All right, forget the cot." He went back around to the other side of the bed and let his robe slide off. He hadn't put the boxers back on. Stephen swallowed and narrowly avoided moaning out loud in admiration. Brian was climbing in again. "If you need to touch," he said, pulling Stephen close, "we'll touch. But you'll have to accept my apologies for the stiffie."

"I am extremely flattered by your stiffie. The way I must look right about now, it's nothing short of gallant of you."

"You look rumpled and exhausted, that's all, not that I can see much at the moment. I've looked worse after an all-night stakeout."

There was quiet for a bit. Then Stephen whispered "Brian?"

"Mm-hm."

"Would you kiss me?"

Brian was still a moment, then lifted up on one elbow. "You really are scared."

"Like I said. After what I've just been through, I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are worse things than dying."

Brian hesitated a moment, considering that, then pulled himself up closer, resting against the other man. "You know," Rafe pointed out, stroking Stephen's stubbly cheek, "we've got the order completely out of whack. You're supposed to go out on a date, then do the kissing, _then_ get in bed naked together. We've got two steps reversed and the third left out entirely."

Stephen mimed tapping a phone keypad--Brian could just see that in the dimness--and, holding the air-phone to his ear, said "Brian? Hi, it's Stephen...Ellison, you asshole."

Brian put a hand to his mouth, stifling a bark of laughter, as Stephen grinned at him and continued. "I was wondering...if you'd like to go out with me sometime?" His grin faded slightly as he studied Brian's face earnestly.

Brian lowered his hand, still smiling, and nodded. "Yeah. I would." Then he leaned down and kissed Stephen's mouth, tenderly, very gentle. Then he lay down again, gathering Stephen close. "Um..."

"Yeah?"

"Do you ever feel weird...you know, that your brother turns you on?"

Stephen shook his head. "No. I never did. Jim didn't either, back when we were younger, but I think he did later on. There were things it was obviously very hard for him to say, to talk about, before we took that trip into the mountains."

"But you don't think he does any more?"

"I know he doesn't any more," Stephen sighed softly against Brian's hair, and fell asleep.

* * *

 

continued in the next chapter

 


	2. Chapter 2

This story has been split into three parts for easier loading.

## A Lovers' Farewell VI: Love Will Prevail

by [Blue Champagne](mailto:bluecham@aa.net)  


Author's webpage: [http://members.aa.net/~bluecham/](http://members.aa.net/%7Ebluecham/)

Author's disclaimer: I don't own anybody. Making no money. Have no money. The usual.

Author's notes: Scroll down to the bottom for the spoiler warning. It is NOT for any form of BDSM or noncon.

 

* * *

A LOVER'S FAREWELL VI: Love Will Prevail -- Part Two

"Oh, man--" Blair abruptly dropped his voice and called softly "Jim, come on, man, get out here. You gotta see this. It's, like, the Pre-amped Post-amped All-Faders-Up Hallmark Moment in here."

Jim appeared behind Blair, looking over his shoulder into the bedroom. "Aw," he chuckled softly. "Isn't that sweet."

"Were they...um...?" Blair did that stupid gesture that he apparently thought meant sex, wagging his eyebrows suggestively, and Jim breathed in for a moment, then shook his head.

"No. But they were having a damn good time thinking about it. Which I would venture to guess is the reason for the cot. I wondered what all that banging in the closet by Brian's room was."

Blair smiled, coming slowly into the room. "I guess Brian overcame his baser urges enough to get back in with Stephen." Stephen and Brian, in the brass queen-size in the middle of the mostly-empty, gleaming hardwood floor, had spooned up together like an old married couple, Stephen holding Brian in both muscular arms.

"Well, you wanted them touching while they slept...Stephen, it's time to wake up and let Blair check you...wakey, wakey..." Jim began to stroke Stephen's arm lightly.

But it was Brian whose eyes fluttered open. "Hi."

"Morning," Jim smiled.

Brian noticed the stroking hand--now running down Stephen's back, avoiding the remains of the scrapes sustained in the Big Tree Caper--smirked, and said "You can go ahead and kiss him if you want. He told me about you two."

Jim lost it for a second, stumbling and catching himself on the brass head of the bedframe. Blair choked, eyes like saucers, then grinned.

"Sorry. I can be pretty blunt in the mornings," Brian said, starting to sit up. "Oops. Blair? Hand me my robe, would you?"

Blair handed the item over, and Brian managed to wriggle out of Stephen's arms without waking him. "Do you really need to check him, Blair? He could use the sleep, from what I've seen."

"I'll let him go back to sleep after we feed him. Looks like he had a sandwich last night?"

"Yeah. He asked me not to wake you." Brian had gotten into his robe while still under the covers, and now got up. "Well, let's go put some breakfast together while Jim gets Stephen awake, I guess..." but Blair and Brian both paused at the door, risking a glance back, and froze. Blair gulped, and a small noise came out of Brian's chest.

Jim had eased half-in to the bed and his hands were moving, gently and intimately, over Stephen's bare torso. He was nuzzling his brother's ear, murmuring something too soft for Blair or Brian to catch. He placed butterfly kisses along Stephen's throat, and the younger man's eyes opened. He smiled like a sunrise and reached up to touch Jim's face, his mouth opening for a slow, sweet kiss. As their lips touched, Jim's arms slid around Stephen, pulling the muscled, pliant body closer, close up against his own--

"Oh God," Blair kind of hiccuped quietly.

"I know," Brian said, grabbed Blair's arm and lunged out the door, closing it behind them.

"I can't _walk_ ," Blair moaned desperately. "This thing's too freaking big."

"Well, can you run? I got the same, um, do you wanna--"

"Yeahc'mon," Blair said instantly, seizing Brian's elbow, but he couldn't drag the other man because Brian was already beginning to outdistance Blair by this time, as they thundered around the corner of the hallway that surrounded the central staircase, and into Brian's bedroom, the door shutting behind them with a solid-hardwood bang.

About ninety seconds later, Blair was still sprawled on top of Brian, both of them breathing like marathon runners. Blair's face was hidden in the nape of Brian's neck; he would have moved to avoid squishing the other man, but Brian had both arms loosely thrown over his back and didn't seem to want him to. Besides, their feet and lower legs, hanging partially off the bed, were in a single giant snarl with Blair's shorts and sweatpants.

Brian sighed contentedly and squeezed Blair. "Thanks, cute stuff."

"You're _so_ welcome, man. Same to you. By the way, did you know I hate that nickname?"

Brian snorted a laugh against Blair's hair. "No. Why didn't you say something?"

"Because most of me hates it--especially coming from someone who looks younger than me--but some deeply twisted part of me thinks it's a turn-on, especially when you give me one of those smoldering looks and tickle me under the chin when you say it. You give _totally_ excellent smolder."

"I wondered, actually, why you let me get away with calling you that. Anybody else would have knocked my head off, including most small children. But I can't help it. You _are_ cute. Well, maybe 'adorable' is a better word."

"I'm gonna assume you mean that in a big-masculine-studly way." They snickered and exchanged a brief kiss.

"We're going to be stuck together in another couple of minutes, here," Brian observed, letting his head fall back to the mattress.

As if on cue, there was a knock. Brian reflexively snatched at the quilt, letting it settle over Blair's back. "Yeah."

The door opened and a wad of damp, steaming towel arched toward them. "I noticed those sheets are imported Italian," Jim said as Brian's hand flashed up to pluck the cloth out of the air, "so Stephen and I thought you might be able to use that. Oh, and Stephen said to tell you he's nominating you two for the Cascade 'Minutemen' Award."

"Thanks a heap," Blair grumped in minor embarrassment. "Damn wiseass sentinels hear _everything_."

"You both feeling a little more relaxed?" Jim leaned in the doorway, smirking, folding his arms.

"Yeah, actually. No thanks to you and Stephen...or should that be 'thanks to you and Stephen?'" Brian said.

Jim chuckled. "Sorry. I didn't know you were both so...easily influenced by the two of us. And anyway, that was just 'good morning', we weren't gonna go for it right there. Stephen's still drained, and anyway, since we got back together, we haven't had a chance to get any farther than...well, his senses hit right when..."

"So he said. That must've been a bitch," Brian opined from underneath the quilt, where he and Blair had retreated in a thumping-shuffling-cats-in-a-sack pile, to take sheet-preservation measures with the towel.

"It would have been worse if Blair hadn't figured out what was up with Stephen and charged to the rescue," Jim said softly, forgoing mention of the bear or anything else associated with the visions, since nobody had yet said anything about them to Brian. He was going to have to know eventually, but Jim and Blair had privately agreed that spacing out the gobsmacking revelations over time was the best way to go. They hadn't exactly counted on Stephen taking the initiative and bringing up his relationship with Jim.

"Speaking of which, where is he?" Blair wondered, his currently frizzy head popping out from under the quilt.

"In the upstairs hall bathroom. He said he was either going to get a shave or commit seppuku, and he'd rather get the shave since he didn't know how to commit seppuku properly. Stevie hates being bristly."

"Jesus, man, don't leave him alone." Blair was crawling out from under the quilt, yanking at his sweats to arrange them comfortably. "He's still weak. Get back in there; I don't care if he bitches about it."

"I was about to."

"I'll get breakfast together," Blair continued as Brian sat up, wrapped in the quilt, and tossed the besmeared towel to him. "Brian's got to go into the station and pick up some paperwork."

"It'll keep me from getting too far behind while we figure out how we're going to handle this," Brian added.

"I heard you mention that yesterday, and I'm still not sure about it. What if something happens to Stephen while you're gone?"

"It won't take more than an hour for the whole trip," Blair said. "If anything happens in that amount of time, the two of us can handle it until he gets back." He went out past Jim, patting his stomach on the way by, and started for the head of the stairs. "Look after your brother and let Brian get ready to go."

"Yes, mother," Jim muttered under his breath.

"I heard that," came Blair's voice.

Jim rolled his eyes and pulled the door shut as Brian chuckled.

 

* * *

Long about two that afternoon, Stephen was asleep again. Brian was sitting on the bed next to him, studying a sentinel primer Blair had prepared for him. Jim and Blair were downstairs, going over Blair's notes and various related reams of paper at the kitchen table, doing research.

"Has Stephen ever shown any signs of a neurological disorder?" Blair said suddenly.

Jim thought. "You have to remember I only have any knowledge of that kind of thing until shortly before he turned sixteen, and then over the last year."

"As far as you know, then."

"He used to have fainting spells, but he was never diagnosed with anything that I know of."

"How did they explain the spells, then?"

"Circumstantial, usually. Took too much pressure on a neck artery while he was wrestling, got dehydrated, heat exhaustion, legs locked while he was standing on the risers, whatever. It wasn't enough to keep him out of sports or anything."

"Hm." Blair tapped at his keyboard. "Once we get him halfway stable, he should have an MRI. If he's got something firing wrong somewhere, it might explain why the senses slammed him so hard. Sentinels have at least some natural, autonomic control factors over their senses, like you and Alex did even before you met up with me; Stephen either doesn't, or he's not able to exercise them, for some reason."

"What made you think of that?"

"Brian's sister. He might be responding so profoundly to Brian, rather than either of us, because we don't have experience with that kind of thing. Not only that--Brian may have some kind of asymptomatic neurological condition as well; not totally unlikely, considering he has at least one relative with a neurological disorder brought about by myelin degeneration, and sometimes these things don't start causing trouble for the victim until said victim is already old and grey. There could be a genetic marker making itself felt, here."

"Should we shove Brian into the MRI chamber, too?"

"That's a thought. I'm not a doctor; I don't know what they might find if he does have something unusual going on, but which isn't producing any symptoms--you've known Brian longer than I have; he doesn't faint or seize or anything, does he? He could hardly be a cop if he did."

"No, but he had a brief suicidal episode after the department New Year's Eve party two years ago. The next morning he emphatically requested that somebody shoot him, and wasn't taking no for an answer for a while. He was such a revolting mess that I think Simon was actually considering the idea."

Blair grinned. "I think we can chalk that one up to the effects of an outside agency--namely Joel's lime sherbet punch. That stuff is deadly. What does he put in it? Everclear?"

"I don't know. The smell of it alone is enough to knock me on my ass, so I've never tried it."

"Very wise. You coming up with anything over there?"

"Just more of the same. Say Stephen does have some kind of misfiring connection--does that mean he'll never be able to get his senses under control?"

Blair sighed. "I don't know. I really believe he will, he's already making progress. But I don't even know yet if that's the problem. We're having to just treat the symptoms here, we've got no data on potential causes yet. Getting that MRI--maybe a PET scan too, check the levels and types of activity in different areas of his brain--isn't going to be easy. If his senses are acting up at all, they're both going to read anomalously, and explaining it's gonna be a major hoot. It's not like we can just interpret the test results ourselves, none of us are trained for that."

"If necessary, we'll haul in some favors. We have people to talk to when we need something like this done on the QT; I wouldn't still be around otherwise."

"We'd just better watch it, that's all I'm saying. A misdiagnosis and real trouble for Stephen are still definite possibilities. You remember when you zoned in the hospital lobby, they thought it was a petit mal seizure that wouldn't die, and they were talking about fucking surgery on your corpus collossum because you weren't responding to the anti-epilepsy drugs? Simon and I barely got you out of there that time."

"Don't remind me." Jim shuddered. "There's no way I'm letting anyone cut Stevie's head open. No fucking way."

"It's okay, Jim," Blair said softly. "We'll take care of him."

"Hey, you mundanes," came Brian's voice from the direction of the big staircase; they could hear an encouraging smile in it. "Look who's up and around." He and Stephen emerged into the kitchen. Stephen, also managing a smile, had his arm over Rafe's shoulders, resting some of his weight, as Rafe supported him around the waist. He looked about fifty times better, but was still disoriented.

"Hey, little brother," Jim smiled, standing up and holding his hands out. "How d'you feel, kiddo?"

"Wrung out," Stephen admitted, letting Jim pull him in for a hug, pausing while Jim kissed him, then finishing "...and sore as hell all over, but a lot better than I did last night."

Blair got up. "Come on into the front parlor; I've got some tests to run on you."

"Whee," Stephen sighed.

"Now don't _you_ start," Blair warned him, shaking a finger under his nose. "Listening to Jim bitch like a spoiled brat is bad enough. You want anything before we get all involved? Sandwich? Something to drink?"

"I'm okay. I still can't get a lot down at once; stomach must've shrunk. We might as well get going on it." The two proceeded out, Stephen with a hand resting on Blair's shoulder.

Brian and Jim considered each other uncertainly for a moment. The two cops hadn't been in charge of each other alone since the discovery of Brian's effect on Stephen, followed by the discovery of Stephen and Jim's effect on Brian, with several other extremely nonstandard revelations mixed in, all of which now had the previously casual friends and coworkers wondering how their macho-guy-buddy relationship was going to hold up. Or _if_ it was.

"So, um," Jim finally essayed.

"Yeah. Uh..." Brian leaned against the counter, scratching his shining dark hair, not meeting Jim's eyes.

"So, you, um..." Jim started laughing helplessly. "You ready to run screaming into the night yet?"

Rafe cracked up in abashed laughter. "Fucking damn nearly, Ellison," he admitted. "Fucking _damn_ nearly. I should have left well enough alone, shouldn't I? Wherever Sandburg and Ellison tread, weird shit is sure to follow."

"Hey, I didn't ask to be a freak," Jim pointed out. "And Sandburg's weirdness never bothered you before. But I'm glad you didn't leave well enough alone. I don't think I could take losing Stephen again."

Brian sobered abruptly at that. "Yeah. I'm glad I was at the right place at the right time, too." They were quiet a moment, then Brian turned suddenly and started fooling with the coffee maker, rummaging in the cabinet over it for filters. "Have you talked to Banks today?"

"No. Did you see him this morning?"

"Yeah. He asked me into his office and I gave him a rundown of the situation--where we are and what we're doing, how long we can be expected to be doing it--of course, a lot of that information was equivocal..."

"He's finally not doing his hear-no-evil-see-no-evil routine, and we don't have anything to tell him."

"He wants to come see Stephen, if it's okay."

"I guess it is, if it's okay with Stephen. And Blair. He's the closest thing we have to a sentinel doctor."

"I should probably be in there watching him do his thing with Stephen, but my brain needs a rest. I about swallowed that sheaf of notes he gave me whole. I'm still digesting it." He picked up the coffee pitcher and crossed the broad, tile-floored room to the big porcelain double sink. "I'd say 'I had no idea being a guide was so complicated' except that I never knew it even existed as an activity until Blair was dropping the idea in my lap as a potential career choice."

"He's a thorough little so-and-so, all right. Hours and freaking _hours_ of tests and observations I've been through can attest to that. Hey--" Jim moved, sitting down in front of Blair's computer. "What'd he do with it...here it is. Blair sat up for a while last night writing a little something for you--up for a pop quiz?"

"Pop quiz? Shit, I know he's a teacher, but give me a break. It's only my second day of class."

"Well, if you don't think you're up to it..." Jim trailed off suggestively, smirking. "I'll tell Blair you're having some trouble. I'm sure he'd be glad to sit you down and pound it all into your head personally."

"Asshole," Brian grinned, firing up the coffee maker. "Take your best shot."

Jim grinned too, looking back at the screen. "We'll start with something easy. Say a sentinel stops talking, moving, et cetera, for no apparent reason. What's that called?"

"A zone, or a zone-out."

"What does it mean?"

"It means he--or she--has concentrated his perceptive ability into one sense due to overfocusing, locking input from the others out."

Jim raised his eyebrows. "Impressive. What do you do to bring him out of it?"

"First, determine what sense he's zoned on. How you do that depends on the situation. If you yourself detect any odd smells, sounds, that kind of thing, check those senses first."

"What do you do once you've isolated the sense he's zoned on?"

"Remove the source of the zone from the area, or remove the sentinel from the area where the zoning element is, and keep increasing the separation until he comes out of it. For instance, if he's zoned on somebody playing a harpsichord, get him away from the area--and keep going until he comes out of it, don't stop when _you_ can't hear it any more, because he almost certainly still can--or tell the harpsichordist to shut up. If he's zoned on the scent of a bouquet of flowers, throw them out the window. If he's gotten mired into the lights on the water, turn him around or cover his eyes."

"What if you can't move the sentinel _or_ eliminate the source of the zone?"

"Stimulate one or more of his other senses until they start feeding him information again. That should bring him out of the zone on the isolated sense."

"Give me an example. Say I was to zone on the smell of the coffee you're making, and for some reason you couldn't open the windows and dump out the coffee. How would you bring me out of it?"

"I'd touch you and talk to you. If I'm your regular guide, we'd have prearranged code words that we'd condition you to respond to, specific touches and sounds designed to focus your attention on me. If we didn't, I'd still provide some immediate, intense stimulation to touch and hearing. And I'd try to get you to look at me, focus your eyes on me."

"What if that didn't work?"

"I'd break out the ammonia, or whatever, for smell. If stimulating the other senses back into operation doesn't work after a few minutes, you might be in danger--eventually, your metabolism will start to slow. So I'd start trying to overwhelm whatever it was you had zoned on with a stronger stimulus to the same sense. This isn't the first choice in terms of bringing you out, though, because you might simply switch gears and remain zoned on the new stimulus, which is dangerously likely if the new stimulus is so strong it can overcome the first one. Also it might hurt you--send you into a spike. Like the harpsichordist--if I couldn't move you or shut the music off, a loud car engine between you and the source of the sound might just disrupt your concentration enough to stop the zone, or it might end up with you zoned on the sound of the engine--or it might shock you so much it knocks your hearing out for a while, or spikes it so hard it leaves you with your head ringing."

"Brian, I'm amazed," Jim said, grinning broadly. "Such a quick study."

"I didn't become the youngest detective in the department by not being able to retain a lot of information on short notice. And if Stephen's life is going to depend on my knowing it..."

"Point taken. Okay, since Stephen hasn't been zoning, let's try another angle. Define 'Sentinel' as explained in Burton's monograph."

"Oh hell, essay answers now?"

"Hey, Blair wrote this, blame him. And he teaches college, not kindergarten."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. You want some coffee?"

"Thanks."

Brian poured milk into his own cup before adding the coffee, then brought both cups and sat down at the table. He folded his hands, pursed his lips in thought, and then began to describe the Burton section of what Blair had given him to study. He did it professionally, sounding more like a cop making an official report than like a student recounting a lesson, which Jim supposed was only reasonable. And he did hit on all the salient points, according to the information shining on the computer screen, though he'd restructured the organization a little so that Jim had to work to locate the references quickly enough to keep up with him.

"Damn. I knew you were good, but I'm still impressed." There was no joking in his tone this time.

"Just a slightly different twist on a detective's powers of observation," Brian pointed out, taking a sip out of his mug. "You can train your memory, you know. It's possible to _learn_ to be eidetic."

"I know. Working with Blair, I'm just about eidetic myself, but I have a couple of advantages you don't. He can guide me through a memory exercise that'll allow me to dig up even information I didn't consciously percieve at the time."

"Am I going to learn to do that with Stephen?"

Jim scanned the file labels and tables of contents. "He hasn't included anything about it in here so far."

"Probably an advanced lesson. Teaching me about sentinels is one thing. But I still think you guys are living in a dreamworld if you think Blair can teach me to teach _Stephen_ about _himself_. Blair can do this because it's his specialty, his thesis subject, and because he's...well, he's Blair. He's a teacher, a scientist, a researcher...he has both the background and the natural capability. I, on the other hand, am a cop, with no pretensions to being anything else. Yeah, okay--" he waved Jim's impending protest aside. "So I'm a _good_ cop. A cop of any kind isn't what Stephen needs."

"What Stephen very obviously needs is _you_ , Brian, no matter what you do for a living. What Blair said he saw you do does not sound to me much like someone with no natural capability, and Blair's providing you the background."

Brian shook his head. "I don't have the _intuitive_ capability he does. He said that a lot of his earlier work with you--and sometimes even now--involved hunches and gut feelings, both yours and his. I'm not any kind of academic; those would have been influenced by his entire oeuvre of knowledge and experience. I have no practical experience with the scientific method, or with exercising my imagination in just that way."

"Maybe not, but you're familiar with the creative use of hunches, and you're damn near impossible to beat when it comes to deductive reasoning, which in this context is so close to the scientific method as to make no difference."

"Jim..." Brian drummed long, elegant fingers on the table, gazing unseeing at them in thought. He had beautiful, fine-boned hands; the nails were smooth and even and shone a little in the light. He didn't keep them cut down to the quick, like most men did; they had just a little length, though not enough to keep him from typing easily, or to cause him to slice his own palm open if he threw a closed-fisted punch. Jim suspected he buffed them, but the effect wasn't an effeminate one.

His hands were built the same way the rest of him was; almost delicate-looking, but underlain with a core so kick-ass that--with the possible exception of Connor, who was a martial arts expert--Rafe was the only cop in Major Crimes that Jim was not sure he would be able to take in a fight, which, on reflection, was odd. Rafe couldn't have weighed much more than one-sixty, though he was almost as tall as Jim, and one would think Simon or someone would have Jim wondering more; but when--as most men, let alone most cops, often do at one point or another--Jim looked around himself and thought "Is there anybody in this room I couldn't take if I had to?" Rafe's was the name that stuck in his head, not Brown's or Simon's or anyone else bigger and meatier.

He wondered why that was, and thought about what he'd seen the young man do. Rafe had unearthly senses of balance and leverage, and he could go from utter stillness to tornadic ferocity in a millisecond. His delicate appearance was part of his strength as a cop; he was tall and had good shoulders, but he was slim, long-boned, young-looking; and he was immediately pegged as a weak link on the good guy's side. Therefore, with the bad guy's attention on what the presumably greater threat was, rather than on him, he could take out a roomful of suspects without permanently damaging any of them before they even realized they'd made a serious miscalculation. Or, if no-permanent-damage ceased to be an option, those "delicate hands" could break the neck of a bodybuilder in one blow; Jim had seen it happen. The _only_ time he was aware of Brian's life having been in danger in a hand-to-hand situation was when a Karate master got the drop on him, knocking him stupid before his reflexes could come into play. He'd been cross-eyed for a week. The most intelligible thing he could say was "Huh?"

Probably because Rafe wasn't used to getting kicked in the head. He was used to doing the kicking.

Conversely, that same appearance was an asset in the interpersonal department. He projected a strong but non-intimidating personality, unlike Jim, who occasionally had been reprimanded for scaring the shit out of witnesses and informants by smiling and saying "Hi, I'm Detective Ellison." (This never failed to slay Sandburg.) But people trusted Brian at once. He might not have been as warm and fuzzy as Blair, but when you need an air of calm authority, warm and fuzzy isn't the way to go, anyway.

Jim refocused his attention on Rafe's full-bodied tenor as he continued. (Another reason he seemed young, Jim thought. He sounded like an eighteen-year-old who _would_ be a baritone once the last part of late adolescence was over.) "I understand why you're determined to see things this way. You're scared shitless for your brother. I get that, I love my brother and sister, too. You want to believe that I'm somehow destined to be the right guide for Stephen, but keep in mind that you're hanging your hope for Stephen's _life_ on the frighteningly slim possibility that I can be to him what Blair is to you. Actually, it's even worse than that. Stephen's not just a sentinel, he's a _sick_ sentinel, and Blair still doesn't know why, much less how to treat it without regular doses of Rafe vibes or whatever the hell it is to keep the crazy cycling at bay. If...if things don't work out...look. I'd die to protect Stephen, both because that's my job as a police officer, and because I care about him. But I don't see how my good will is going to be any substitute for ability, here."

Jim blew on his coffee and had another sip. "Blair believes you can help him. Like you said, Blair's intuition is creepily powerful. He comes to conclusions you and I can't even see the connections to, and he's usually right. Hell, off the top of my head I can't think of a time when he's been wrong, except for the Alex fiasco, and even then, from an academic point of view, he wasn't wrong. Brian...you do know that either of us would take your place in a heartbeat if it were possible, don't you? We were better than nothing for him--we were able to keep him alive that long--but that was all we could do. Blair was _really_ scared."

Brian gave him a look at that last, but only replied "So you've all said." He tapped his spoon against the side of his cup. "I can't promise you I'll be able to...be everything that I'd need to be to allow Stephen to be the best darn sentinel and most well-adjusted guy around. But I won't let him die."

Jim reached over and covered Brian's free hand with his own. It wasn't the first time he'd touched Brian, but the other times had been quick, practical in nature, and Jim hadn't had the attention to spare to notice how smooth and soft his skin was. _Carolyn_ hadn't had hands that soft, though that might have been because hers were always being dunked in formaldehyde and such. He brought himself back to the subject and said earnestly "You're not going to be thrown out there alone with that responsibility. He's _my_ brother--my responsibility--and Blair's friend. We wouldn't abandon him, either. And we wouldn't abandon you."

Brian smiled a little, turning his hand to lace his fingers with Jim's. "I knew that. But think about it. It's like...say he needed a marrow transplant and I was the only tissue match the doctors could find in time to save his life...and then they tell me not only am I the only available match, I'm the only one who can safely perform the surgery. They tell me 'Don't worry, we'll give you the short course, eight years of medical school crammed into a few days--you'll do fine!' How would you feel? I'd have to say I'd be feeling pretty darn sorry for that transplant recipient. His chances would be for shit, no matter how much sunshine the doctors blew up my ass about how I was a natural and I was going to do great."

Jim squeezed his hand in rueful recognition. "I guess I hadn't thought about it that way. You're not just freaked out by it all--you're scared shitless too, aren't you?"

"For Stephen. Yes. And for me--that I'll fail, and that I won't be able to live with that. Look, are you _sure_ we shouldn't just take him to the hos--"

"Brian. We don't need to go over that again, do we?"

Brian sighed. "No. Just grasping at straws, I guess."

"Um, speaking of straw-grasping..." Jim got up, collecting their empty mugs and heading back over to the coffee maker. "Have you and Blair been...?"

"...attaining mutual relief from certain kinds of stress...?" Brian wondered, raising an eyebrow with a half-smile.

Jim poured coffee, looking a little embarrassed. "Yeah. Before today."

"No, this was the first time. He wouldn't have done that with me and not told you, and I wouldn't have, either. Today it...suddenly seemed appropriate."

"Appropriate because his husband and your new romantic interest were getting into it right in front of you?"

"Well, that's what made it _imperative_ ," Brian corrected him, eliciting a snort of laughter from Jim. "I don't know why, Jim. It's not usually my style. I'd be lying if I said Blair and I have never given each other the eye--I mean, shit. I don't have to tell _you_ what he's got--but I'm no cruiser, you know that."

"Well, you know I'm not, either," Jim said, coming back and setting Brian's mug in front of him. "But there I was with...with my..."

"With your brother, yeah, Jim, I was there, I saw it, it may have been one of the most beautiful things I ever _have_ seen," Brian said, shifting around in his chair. "And now I've gotta get the visual out of my head or I'm gonna jump _you_ , right here." He had a swig of too-hot coffee and winced at the burn.

"Hey, no need to injure yourself there, buddy," Jim chuckled. "It can't have been _that_ bad."

"Jim..." Brian looked away, speaking very quietly. "It only took that one look at the two of you for me to understand why Blair has no problem with you and your brother being in love. It was the...the _rightness_ , the realness of it, not just the fact that you two are both hunks, that made it so impossibly...'arousing' isn't the right word, it's too limited. This hit the heart every bit as hard as the groin. It was like an affirmation of the whole concept of true love."

Jim considered Brian, who was gazing out the wrought iron french doors toward the mosaic-tiled patio. There were two park-type benches out there, set on either side of a stone birdbath, at the center of which bubbled a little fountain. Farther up the slope of the yard, a Victorian reflecting ball sat on a pedestal, catching the shifting, dappley coins of sunlight that filtered through the tall, old trees.

"That's not the kind of thing I usually expect to hear you say," Jim observed.

Brian looked back around and half-smiled at him. "Why? Are you talking about my badass detective act? Well, it's not really an act, but it's not all of who I am, either. Keep in mind you also shit blue when I showed up for Blair with tickets to the symphony, and the week after that to take him to 'Phantom of the Opera'."

"Opera," Jim muttered, grimacing. "Then you came home with those strange foreign films and watched them half the night."

"Tell you a secret. We only rent 'La Sonadora' for the nude scenes." He grinned. "You've only really gotten to know me more recently. You, I think _I_ better start trying to get to know better as of yesterday. Hardass Ellison cuddling his brother...man. Hardass Ellison cuddling _Sandburg_ was hard enough to believe."

"Don't call me hardass, and why is it unbelievable? Blair is eminently cuddlable."

"He's arguably the most cuddlable human being on the planet, but you, to quote someone we both know and love, are, like, so _not_ , man," Brian said in a dead-on Blair voice.

Jim chuckled. "Do you do that in front of him?"

"I did once. I haven't had the guts to do it again." He winced graphically and squirmed in his chair, miming an extremely sore ass.

Jim snickered. "Yeah, he may be shorter than we are, but he's not what you could call a little guy--or a wimp--by any stretch of the imagination. Even Alex had to dose him with that damn gas before he'd go with her...um." Jim coughed and looked away.

Brian considered him. "Speaking of Alex," he began, but, to Jim's relief, he seemed to be trying, in a way, to change the subject, or at least palliate it somewhat. "There's something in Blair's notes I don't get. He talks about your reaction to Alex's presence--which I think we all remember pretty well. H about had to hose me with seltzer to put my hair out after you glared at me like that in the break room when I put my hand on your shoulder."

"Um. Yeah. Sorry about--"

"No, no, I'm not looking for an apology here. But that's kind of my point--you had, at first, some kind of freaked-out reaction to Alex Barnes's presence, even though you didn't even know who she was or that she was around. Blair ascribed this to a 'territorial imperative'."

"Yeah," Jim said. "And?"

"Alex, but not Stephen. Why do you think that is?"

Jim sighed, leaning back in his chair. "I can tell you what Blair thinks. He's got some theories. For one--Stephen, forget just being a member of my tribe, is a member of my _family_. Possibly sentinels only react with the paranoid out-of-my-space reflex when their territory is infringed on by an _alien_ sentinel, one not a member of the tribe. And however you define my tribe, Stephen would _have_ to be in it. And after all, if the tendency to manifest the senses is genetic, it makes sense that it might manifest in more than one member of the same tribe at a time. In fact, that would be an ideal situation--the more sentinels you had, the more territory they could monitor and the more covered you were when one sentinel slept, or got sick, or got old. Not only that, Burton's writings didn't say that a sentinel was just _anybody_ who had enhanced senses. He said that 'A sentinel was _chosen_ because of a genetic advantage', unquote. If every tribe had someone who acted as their sentinel, they would likely just choose whoever had both the most developed senses _and_ the other instincts one would need to perform duties like that. Even someone with senses like mine wouldn't be much of a perimeter guard if they had athsma or no sense of direction or something. So there were probably tribes who had more than one member with advanced senses, and tribes who had no true genetic sentinels at all at times, but simply chose someone, or maybe more than one, on the basis of the most acute senses, tracking ability, stamina, all that."

"Well, that makes sense. Does he have any other theories?"

"A few. Here's one: It's also possible I reacted to Alex's presence like that not because she was a sentinel, and not even because she was an alien sentinel from another tribe, but because she was a dangerously nuts sentinel. She was a sociopath, a methodical killer, on top of being a thief."

"That doesn't explain, the, um...the rest of his notes about you and Barnes."

"I know, I know...we're swimming about half-blind, here. Since Stephen came up like this, a lot of Blair's assumptions have been shot to shit--and he's especially pissed about it because he says he shouldn't have made half of those assumptions. He says he was getting scientifically lazy because he only had one subject to work with, then only two, one turning out to be a highly atypical sample...by rights, before you draw any conclusions--from the standpoint of investigative cultural anthropology, at least--you're supposed to have a _population_ to study, or at least a decent amount of verifiable recorded data."

"And all Blair has are theories and notions, some from a guy who's best remembered for writing, or at least translating, what his contemporaries considered smut," Brian said softly. "It must make him crazy."

"Sometimes."

"God. Who'd be a scientist. Years of double-failsafed, painstaking research and experimentation, only to have it all fall out from under you when one factor comes along that flies in the face of your whole hypothesis..."

"I thought you said you didn't know anything about scientific work."

"I don't, but I certainly know people who do. You should hear 'em bitch sometimes."

"Oh, I do, believe me."

"Jim, Brian--we need you in here," came Blair's voice, echoing through the wide wooden-floored hallway that led to the front parlor. There was some urgency, but no agitation, in the tone. Jim and Brian tore down the hall and around the corner like bats out of hell anyway.

The scene that met them was unexpectedly peaceful. The front parlor was full of antiques, had flowered carpeting, dark cherrywood occasional tables, beautiful glass knickknacks and a large mahogany cabinet with glass panels set in the doors. The cabinet held a gorgeous set of 20's era china and glassware. (Brian's comment to Jim when a bunch of his friends were helping him move in: "Yeah--precious, I know. I've _gotta_ redecorate unless I want to wind up outed to the world by a parlor.")

Stephen, as it happened, was sitting quietly on a horsehair-covered antique chair, gazing raptly into the cabinet and the sunlight that reflected through its mirrors and colored glasses.

"Folks," Blair said softly, "I give you Stephen Jeremy Ellison's first zone. Brian? Want to bring him out of it?"

"How apropos," Jim said softly, gazing at his brother. Seeing the beatific expression on Stephen's face almost made Jim want to tell them to let him be. He knew how beautiful some things were when you focused in so deeply, and light in glass was one of his favorites.

"Well," Brian said softly, after a moment, "it's obviously sight he's zoned on, so..." Brian moved around the wingback chair and occasional table (w/small Tiffany lamp) that were between him and Stephen's area of the room, skirted the coffee table where various items of Blair's sentinel-testing paraphernalia were scattered, and edged around the front of the chair, between Stephen and the cabinet. "Stephen?" he said, taking Stephen's shoulders and working them gently in his hands. "You in there?" When this produced nothing after a moment, Blair offered "He may be into the reflections of light he can still see around you--I grant you _we_ can't see them, but he can."

"Stephen." Brian went down on one knee, reaching up with both hands to lay his fingers lightly over Stephen's eyes and draw the lids down. He felt the delicate fluttering of lashes against his skin as Stephen's eyes finally closed. Brian leaned in and kissed his mouth gently.

"Good instincts," Blair muttered very softly, with a sideways smirk at Jim. Jim poked him, but even though he was being flip, Jim knew Blair was right. Most people have more tactile sensors in their lips than they do in their whole back. (The other non-sex-characteristic-related high-sensitive spots being the tongue, the tip of the nose, and the fingertips. Which, Blair had hypothesized, might explain kissing and nuzzling and hand-holding as almost universal indicators of affection.) "Sometimes a kiss is all it takes to bring _you_ out."

"Yeah, but for future reference, he's gonna have to learn to swing it without the kiss. The whole world isn't gonna find them kissing to be as cute as we think it is."

"Duh, Jim...shh." Brian had lowered his hands and taken Stephen's, as the other man began to blink rapidly, and slumped a little.

"You with us, Stephen?" Brian asked. "How do you feel? Can you see?"

"Brian," Stephen whispered, and his hands tightened. "It was _beautiful_."

"I bet it was. You zoned."

"I...?"

"You remember Blair telling you about Jim's zones, don't you?"

"Hell, I remember seeing Jim _do_ it. _That_ was a zone?"

"They're not always so pleasant, I'm sorry to have to tell you," Jim said, coming over to put a hand on Stephen's shoulder. "Sometimes they're enough to make you heave, if you _could_ heave, which you can't, until something brings you out."

"And even the pleasant ones are dangerous if you don't have someone to watch your back," Blair reminded him. "Maybe especially the pleasant ones. That's why I kick Jim's ass when he uses his senses extensively without me or Simon or Megan around."

"Megan...you taught Megan to guide?"

"No, but she knows enough to get Jim private, scream in his ear, douse him with water, slap him around--whatever seems to help--if he goes into what looks like a petit-mal seizure. So does Simon. So anyway...at least your first zone was painless, and it happened while you were with us," Blair added. "Though since you hadn't zoned yet, I was kind of hoping you might be spared the whole deal. On the other hand, it might also mean that the more typical sentinel mechanisms are starting to activate."

"So it might be good that he zoned?" Jim wondered.

"Maybe, maybe not. There's no way to tell if he's normalizing without separating him from Brian long enough that whatever it is Brian does for him isn't a factor any more, and needless to say I'm not thrilled with that idea."

"Neither am I," Stephen said, his hands tightening possessively on Brian's. "I don't know if I could take that again."

"It's too soon to worry about that right now, anyway," Blair said, as much to comfort the highly alarmed-looking Jim as to reassure Stephen. "You're still weak, and we've still got too much work to do."

"Speaking of weak," Brian said, "I still say we should take him to the doctor. Just to make sure he's recovering okay."

Blair chewed his lip. "Stephen? Do you think you need to see a doctor?"

"I'm afraid to leave the house, actually," Stephen said, with no hint of shame at the admission. "It's bright and loud and smelly and Jesus knows what else out there, and this dial thing is still damned touch-and-go."

"How about if I hold your hand the whole time?" Brian offered, smiling.

"Ordinarily an offer like that would be spectacularly welcome, but right now I'm more scared of another spike, or group of spikes, than I am desirous of an excuse to hold your hand. Though judging by the evidence I don't need an excuse anyway," Stephen added, glancing down at their still-joined hands. "I'll be all right, Brian. I'm just beat up and sore and tired."

"If you say so," Brian said, clearly still not pleased. "I just...God, Stephen. You looked like a _corpse_ falling out of that shower. A corpse that hurt like hell."

"At that point I might as well have been," Stephen conceded. "But you're here now. I'll be all right."

Stephen might have been too unused to his sentinel abilities to detect the obvious tension that went through Brian at those words, but Jim saw, heard _and_ smelled it. All Brian said, though, was "Yeah. I'm here now." He smiled and kissed Stephen again.

 

* * *

There was a knock. "Yeah," Stephen called.

"It's me," Jim said. "Can I come in?"

"Sure. Just shut the door quick, I've got it nice and steamy in here."

Jim slipped in, shutting the door, its iron knob clunking the latch audibly. The bathroom was all done the same way the rest of the house was, a decor scheme Brian called "Kind of Old-Fashioned or Something". It _was_ a very old house, with an eclectic mix of styles by this time, and had undergone renovations such as adding showers and redoing the wiring and whatnot, but most of the built-in fixtures were still intact.

For instance, the tub Stephen was soaking in had feet, and should have had a lifeguard chair attached to it. That morning Stephen had blinked at it, saying "Wow. I thought my Jacuzzi was over the top."

Jim had replied "You should see the one in the master bath. You could Jetski in that thing. If he's at all fond of baths, Brian must have a hot water problem that makes Blair's and mine look sick."

Turned out that wasn't true; some ancestor or other of Brian's--he thought it was his grandfather--had done his part to add a little something to the family residence by tossing the single large water heater and replacing it with several that were not too much smaller, each serving a different area of the house. Brian had been heard to bitch at the hassle of maintaining the damn things, since they were getting elderly.

Stephen, on the other hand, couldn't have been happier to hear that he could fill the whole tub with steaming water without beggaring the rest of the house for a few drops to wash a dish or do the laundry in. Since it was past sunset, getting late, and Stephen was worn out and still sore as hell, Blair--rather than drugging him again--had called it a day for Stephen and Brian, and sent the former off to parboil for a while to improve his chances of sleeping comfortably.

"How are you?" Jim asked through the steam. The soft globe-lights, in sconces to either side of the ornate mirror that hung over the broad, shallow, free-standing sink, cast a blurred, rosy light through the mist. Stephen was sunk so far down in the tub Jim didn't see him for a moment.

Then two blue eyes peered over the gleaming white lip of the tub and Stephen managed to scoot up a little higher against its gently sloping back. "Ah, there you are, boy. Peel me a grape."

Jim chuckled. "Yeah, that thing's pretty sybaritic. I can see why Brian went ahead and accepted the house in lieu of those stocks."

"Who got the stocks? Carol?"

"Yeah, and it's a good thing. I think she's living on the returns now. Medical and Life insurance for stunt doubles is sketchy at best, and now she can't even work, of course. Her medical bills are hell." Jim approached the tub and knelt comfortably next to it, resting his folded arms on the edge. "Like I said, how're you holding up? No signs of a spike yet?"

"No. Believe me, the loud, desperate screaming will clue you in if I even suspect I might be about to have a spike. Expect also to hear such screams in the event I suddenly go blind or deaf or numb. But so far the hardest part of sitting here has been not zoning."

"What are you trying not to zone on?"

"Sight, again. The steam, and the light shining through it. I started getting closer and closer in...have you noticed, you can _see_ all the tiny currents in the air, the way they rise and fall over hot and cold areas, through drafts--if there's enough moisture in the air for it to be misty? Focus in close, so close you can see individual droplets, and each one has a rainbow inside, each one throws a spectrum of the light..."

Jim smiled. "I likely first noticed that around about the time you were born. You can watch the air moving in heat distortion waves, too."

"Why didn't you zone then, Jim? Like Blair says, your senses, with certain rare exceptions, worked without a hitch when you were a kid."

"Blair thinks it's likely, from what he's read, that the senses don't fully develop--so that you _can_ deliberately focus in that closely--until later on, around puberty. A child who zoned frequently, in the primitive world, would be highly unlikely to live long enough to leave any offspring. Either that, or--he thinks this is an interesting situation--it's an occurrence of what we'd think of as a lesser form of an ability being more likely to be passed down than a naturally higher aptitude. He says it's possible it takes an adult level of concentration to really go in deep like that, so a kid with ADD would have a better chance of living long enough to reproduce than one who could concentrate for longer periods. In either case, sentinels whose senses matured completely later on would gradually edge out the ones whose senses clicked all the way on as infants. Not only that; since a kid would make a lousy active sentinel anyway, likely nobody would see senses that strong in childhood as being much of a good thing, so even if they did make it to adulthood they might not do very well in the potential-mate pool."

"But you just said you _could_ see the individual water droplets."

"Not as closely as you're describing. I can do that now, of course; but then, I couldn't pick the droplets out. I could just close in enough to pick out the air currents and catch a larger, multi-drop rainbow occasionally. But you didn't zone on the mist?"

"It was tempting..."

"I know," Jim said softly. "When it's good, it's...it can be soothing, beautiful, so _fascinating_. I imagine it's a lot like the lure of certain drugs, the same kind of escape from pain, or bad feelings, or just the mundane world. Sight is the hardest for me. When I start to get lost in something beautiful--something that _stays_ beautiful, as you focus in more and more closely, until you think the individual molecules must be beautiful in themselves..."

"Fractal beauty," Stephen said, with a small smile.

Jim smiled back. "Yeah...Blair says I get this look like I'm seeing God, and he feels bad for having to pull me out of it. But what's supposed to have happened to that mortal lover of Zeus who insisted on seeing him in his true shape...?"

"Died of a glory overdose."

"Even the beautiful ones'll kill you if you don't come out in time. Remember that."

"I know, Jim." Stephen laid a flushed, dripping hand on his brother's arm. "This has all got to be hell for you. With that overpowering need you have to protect me, even worse than the one you have to protect in general."

"It hasn't been a picnic so far, no. God...I thought I was going to lose you, Stephen. One way or another. You'd die, or lose your mind, or be institutionalized, or kill yourself--I know you've said you couldn't do that, but..."

"I'm no longer as sure of that as I once was, I have to admit. Like I told Brian, I've now had concrete, gut-wrenching proof of something most people only know theoretically, if they believe it at all--that there _are_ worse things than dying. I can't blame you for worrying, Jim, but right at this point, it's not something I'd even consider. So don't be afraid of that."

"I'm trying to keep that in mind. Listen...speaking of focusing in. I know Brian is gorgeous, but I still don't recommend focusing sight in on him, at least not yet."

"Why not?"

"Because human bodies are one of the numerous things in the universe that are _not_ beautiful all the way down. I was watching the sunlight through Blair's hair once, early on, shortly after I met up with him..."

"Well, yeah. He has beautiful hair, especially in the sunlight."

"Have you ever seen a microscope photograph of a human hair? Like maybe in a shampoo ad?"

Stephen just blinked at him a second, then said "Oh. Um...I see what you mean."

"Only, the hair that's still on people's heads is also full of scalp gook and dust and the occasional tiny insect leg and Christ, you have no idea. I've always been glad that I don't have to dial up and look at my _own_ hair, I nearly threw up. It was all I could do not to grab him and rip that repulsive mess off his head. And if you think hair is bad, skin is worse."

"Skin is worse?"

"One word. Pores."

"Eesh..." Stephen appeared to be considering the implications of this.

"Plus it's greasy, about eight thousand colors at that level of focus--especially on white people--and it flakes constantly. I didn't think I was ever gonna have sex again. So anyway, since you're just starting up this thing with Brian...I mean, I'm used to the senses. I'm used to what I see when I look at a person with my senses dialed up--I understand now that what I'm seeing is normal, and it doesn't bother me even though it isn't what you could call attractive. But it's honestly _traumatic_ , seeing something like that for the first time, outside of a science magazine. An experience like that with Brian might be enough to throw a wrench in your, what did Blair say...burgeoning romance. He said it'd unburgeon you in a New York minute."

"Oh, so _Blair's_ the source of this advice."

"It's communal, actually. I said I hope you don't dial up sight on Brian too soon, and he laughed, and said that if Brian was the first person you grossed yourself out zooming in sight on, you'd never be able to look at him the same way. And by the way, _don't_ zoom in on yourself until you're used to it, or you'll never leave the shower again."

"Sheesh. Okay, no zooming in on Brian. You mentioned his eyes, too. Are eyes gross?"

"Not exactly, no, especially not if you're into opthamology. If their pupils are dilated enough, you can actually see _into_ their eyes, which is a little bit gross, but useful for diagnosing detached retinas. But trust me--there is no romance in gazing into mucus membranes with a starkly visible three-D network of blood vessels. And there's this big, bulbous cornea squatting there in the in the middle of everything, on top of an iris--which, at that range, because of the way it tightens and loosens to change the size of the pupil, resembles nothing so much as, well...an asshole."

Stephen shrieked with laughter and collapsed into the tub again, barely keeping his mouth and nose out of the water, while Jim grinned at him. Finally getting a lungful of air to talk with, Stephen strangled out "'My darling, your eyes are like assholes...' Of course, then again, how many hazel assholes have you seen?" and went off again.

"Oh, great--thanks for the visual, you sick fuck. Especially considering that the definition of 'hazel' eyes is 'any light color with a ring of brown around the pupil'."

Stephen let out a literal scream of mirth, such that Jim suddenly thrust both arms into the water to take his shoulders and keep him from sinking into the spacious depths of the tub.

There was a banging on the door. "Stephen!"

"He's okay, Brian," Jim called back. "I told him a joke."

"Must've been a thigh-slapper," Rafe muttered. "You sure he's all right?"

"He's fine. Where's Blair?"

"Went to Stephen's house to check his locks and leave a note for the cleaning service, rescue the perishables, pick up clothes, that kind of thing...Jesus, Jim, what did you say to the poor guy?" Stephen was still losing it, hard.

"I don't think you want to know." Jim hoped Brian didn't decide to come in and see for himself that Stephen was okay. One look at Brian's vividly hazel eyes and Stephen might _never_ stop laughing.

"Well, if you say he's okay...you _will_ yell for me if he spikes, of course."

"Of course."

Brian muttered under his breath as he moved off.

Stephen had the hiccups.

"Serves you right," Jim said.

"Me?" Stephen wheezed. " _Me_? You started it." Stephen splashed him. Thoroughly.

"Oh, now you're gonna get it--" a water fight started up and Jim was drenched in seconds. They wound up in each other's arms across the tub's edge, out of breath and laughing.

"You're a little wet, there, Jim," Stephen said.

"Whose fault is that?"

"Better kick your shoes off before the water runs into them."

'He must think I'm stupid,' Jim thought, smiling, as he kicked off his shoes. 'Nah. He just knows that all I need is an excuse.'

As the second shoe rolled away, bumping the little white-painted radiator, Stephen grasped Jim's shoulders with everything he had and hauled all of him but his lower legs over the side and into the tub. The splash soaked the area. Fortunately there was a spill drain in the floor under the tub, and the water just ran off into it.

"Hey!" Jim fake-protested, the giant, glowing Ellison grin evident on his face even as he laughed water out.

"Jimmy has a potty mouth, Jimmy makes butt jokes, nyah na nyah na nyah nyah..."

"You--!"

"What are you gonna do about it, Jimmy?" Stephen panted as they paused, stilling, his face flushed with heat, steam and exertion, his eyes bright as stars, his grin as feral as Jim's. "Hold me down and spit in my mouth?"

"Yeah," Jim growled, and slid the rest of the way into the tub, full length on top of Stephen. Another splash of water soaked the tile, runnelling off into the overflow drain.

The kiss was ferocious. Stephen moaned into it, almost desperate. He got more desperate when Jim started humping against him and Stephen couldn't get his hands in where he could get the damn jeans off. "Jim, geez, hold it--"

"God, I want you--"

"I want you too, now hold it a damn minute! Fuck all wet jeans...you're gonna have to do this, Jim, I've got no leverage. Well, not without possibly endangering some things neither of us want endangered, I mean."

Jim roughly yanked the buttons open--fortunately the jeans were old--and the process of getting them off--involving, in the confined space, Jim moving sort of like a gigantic, undulating caterpillar on top of Stephen--had the younger man clutching the sides of the tub in an excess of arousal and growling through gritted teeth "Why did I have to pull you in before you got naked...?"

"Because you're...a total brat...you sick fuck," Jim managed to pant as he pitched the jeans and shorts out onto the tile. The t-shirt offered far less resistance.

 

* * *

Blair came in, coming up the stairs, looking for somebody. "Brian? Where are you?"

"I'm in my room."

Blair had to pass the upstairs hall bathroom on the way...and paused.

When he did emerge through the door into Brian's room, it was to see Brian lying on his back with his hands over his face and a distinct bulge in his pants.

"I am such a perv," he muttered.

Blair chuckled. "You're no worse than me, man. I've been battling Attila the chubby ever since I found out about Jim and Stephen. Well, at least since Jim and Stephen have been fooling around again. Do you think I'm not fighting the mental images? It sounds like the iceberg and the Titanic getting it on in the North Atlantic in there. If it weren't for that old drain system you'd have water pouring over the landing and into the front hall."

Brian let his hands fall with a sigh, staring at the ceiling. "Are you ever jealous at all?"

"Not very often, but I think I know what you mean," Blair said softly, adjusting his grip on the stacks of clothes and such he'd brought over from Stephen's.

"It's hard to look at those two and not want what they have," Brian said softly, "but it'd be...I don't know, impossible to be angry about it. I mean, Stephen and I have been trading hot looks and dropping hints for a while; my radar on him was active, but he'd never talked about guys. If he wanted to flirt, I was fine with that, but I figured the next move was his, and he made it, finally...but that's nothing compared to what you and Jim have. So I guess if you don't have a problem with it, it's not surprising that I don't."

"Problem? No, not that way, but that's not to say I don't have a problem...I mean, just the thought of them in there...brothers in love, those long, powerful bodies wet and shining, the light sliding over those muscles, moving together and kissing and _touching_ \--"

"Drop the stuff and get over here," Brian said hurriedly, kicking his shoes off and attacking the buttons of his shirt, then giving up and just hauling it out of his slacks and over his head.

"Thought you'd never ask," Blair murmured, dumping the armfuls in a chair and shedding clothes like autumn leaves as he almost ran across the room to the bed and Brian.

"With those two around," Brian muttered as he grabbed Blair by the hips and hauled him up onto the bed, "We ain't ever gonna need Viagra."

 

* * *

Jim was clinging, boneless and breathless, to the side of the tub, having tried and failed to get all the way out. Stephen had an arm thrown over the other side of the tub to keep himself from sliding all the way down. "Jim, I love you, but the water's getting cold," he panted.

"Uh, yeah," Jim acknowledged, renewing his struggles. Getting _into_ this position with Stephen, since all he'd had to do was fall in on top, and the tub had been full of water that buoyed them both in its high-sided depths, had been one thing. Getting back out, after dumping most of the water over the side in a rhythmic series of splashes, was posing their freshly lassitude-soaked persons a bit of a problem. Wet porcelain is slick. "I'm getting too old for this," he sighed.

Stephen gave him an incredulous look. "Too 'old' to hump off with your brother in a cop's bathtub?" he said.

Jim snorted, almost losing his grip. "You're right. I don't know if there's a cutoff age for that." He braced his hands on each side of the rim and then levered himself up in a pec-stretching push-up move that wasn't difficult once he got everything aligned right. Not for Jim, at least.

Stephen watched, sighing. " _God_ you're incredible."

"I wouldn't go that far," Jim said warmly, smiling, as he leaned back down to his brother. "And you're nobody's slouch yourself." He murmured the last into Stephen's ear as he helped him to his feet. "Considering what we were floating in there for a while, we'd better shower off," he pointed out, and pulled the drain plug.

"And then clean up Brian's bathroom," Stephen smirked. Jim smiled back as he pulled the double curtain all the way around the freestanding tub, then fooled with the water temperature and turned on the broad, flat showerhead that resembled a steel colander. They pulled each other close under the warm streams, kissing, rubbing together gently, stroking.

"I wish we hadn't been so quick out of the starting gate," Jim murmured while Stephen's mouth was exploring his ear. "This first time since...since the last time. You know."

"Actually, I liked it. It was like all those times we'd be too crazy for it to hold on long back then. It was worst when we'd be stuck in public someplace and it'd take some work to get private, and I'd put my hand on your zipper and you'd fall over, cursing a blue streak."

"I got you that way more than once, too, remember," Jim reminded him, kneading his ass gently. He kissed Stephen's nose.

"Yeah. The Hair-trigger Brothers."

"Sounds like a Survivalists offshoot of the Doobies."

Stephen muffled a splashy snort on Jim's shoulder. "You're dating yourself, old man."

"The joke sucked, too."

"I wasn't going to mention that part. We're not getting very rinsed, here, Jim, and I'm going to prune up. Maybe we could continue this on dry land?"

"Sure. We don't want to risk irritating your skin, Rafe vibes or no." Jim let Stephen move away a little, then began to stroke him slowly with both hands, starting at the top, tilting Stephen's head back into the water, rinsing his hair. When Stephen realized what he was up to, he took the stainless-steel showerhead-pipe in one hand for balance and closed his eyes, letting Jim's gentle hands work.

"No wonder the horses gave the grooms so much trouble. They were holding out for _you_ to rub them down."

"They didn't like the grooms because Dad hired his buddies' nephews for stable hands, rather than real grooms. They liked me because I--"

"Because you had good hands...always have...uh..."

"Well, hey. I guess I do," Jim smiled. "Can you keep that thing under control until we get everything cleaned up?"

"I'll use Brian's method. Turn the water past cold to 'liquid methane' before we get out."

"Before _you_ get out. I'm not up for liquid methane."

"We'll see whether you're up, after I give you _your_ rubdown--say. Jim, shhh...listen." Stephen's head cocked, his eyes opening.

"What is it?"

"Just listen."

Jim shrugged...then grinned. "Didn't take much tuning-out other noises to pick _that_ up. They're at it again."

"Boy are they. At least they're managing to push it farther than sixty-four seconds or whatever that was this morning. Damn, listen to Blair. Go, Brian, way to...uh...do whatever it is you're doing."

"Blow job," Jim said offhandedly, standing up, taking Stephen's hands and settling them against the sides of his face to indicate that it was his turn.

Stephen's hands began to move in slow, soothing circles as he said uncertainly "Um...after I'm used to it--get more experience with sounds in general, I mean, narrowing things down, picking things out, amplification, all the stuff Blair was talking about with Brian and me--will I be able to tell things like that, or are different varieties of slurping noise an area of particular expertise for you?"

"You'll learn to sort sounds down and identify them, when you've had some more experience with what things sound like at that level. But I didn't have to do that here. That's Blair's blow job mantra."

"They are gonna kill us if they find out we're doing this."

"Judging by this morning, they likely know we are--considering what I said to them then, it has to have occurred to them we can, so on their own heads be it."

"You don't ordinarily eavesdrop, though, do you? Blair seemed pretty emphatic about not abusing the abilities he's teaching me."

"Only in the line of duty, in which case I'll use everything I've got--that'd be my job even if I weren't a sentinel. A lot of it isn't admissible, of course, but it's still information I can use to bring in a perp. Otherwise...quite frankly, you'd be surprised how batshit-boring it gets being inundated by everybody's personal intrigue. It's like living in a giant junior high sometimes. Anyway, in Blair and Brian's case...I think they _like_ the fact that we can hear them."

"Poor Brian. Little did he know his place was going to be transformed into the House of Kink."

"Think more like it'd be a dream come true for a healthy young guy with an equally healthy young libido."

"Brian never struck me as a rampant-screwing-around type."

"Does what's happening here feel like rampant screwing around to you?" Jim asked softly, curious.

Blue eyes met blue. "Now that you mention it, no. It feels...loving. Especially for me. The three of you are all here because you want to take care of me...and I haven't had anyone want to do that since you left. It's...it's nice, Jim. I really appreciate all of you." His eyes glimmered with more than humidity.

Jim pulled him close, stroking him. "Better get used to it. We're not going to let anything else happen to you." They kissed, soft and slow, and Jim murmured "Let's get you out of here and dried off."

 

* * *

"What time is it?" Blair and Brian were tangled together in the middle of Brian's large bed.

Brian lifted his head to look over Blair's. "Eleven-thirty."

"Hm. As tired as Stephen was, he and Jim have probably already sacked out. I wonder why they didn't tell us? You really ought to be with Stephen."

"Jim's with him; and I'm just a yell away. Stay here and sleep with me?" Brian sounded charmingly shy. "Unless you're not comfortable with it. I mean..."

"Sure. It's not like you're some lay I picked up, you're my friend. Sleeping with you would be great. Thanks." Blair curled close.

"I just wondered...it's a different thing from sex. Even more...intimate, in a way. And you're with Jim and all..."

"Jim is now with me _and_ Stephen, and I'm willing to bet they're wrapped up just like we are. So if it doesn't bother Jim, it doesn't bother me. I'm just not all that sleepy yet..." he trailed off into a yawn. "Getting there, though."

"Would you rather get up and do something until you feel like sleeping?"

"I am doing something. I'm having stress-reducing, warm-fuzzy-providing physical contact with someone I care about very much." Blair kissed Brian's forehead and smiled at him. Brian smiled back, but sighed and let his gaze wander.

"Thinking about what you and Jim were discussing this afternoon?"

"What else? I wish things would just slow _down_ for a minute. I may be able to keep up with all this intellectually, but the rest of me is shrieking for a life preserver."

"You've got one. Actually you've got several," Blair reminded him, squeezing him in demonstration.

"That's part of why I _need_ the life preserver. One day I'm coming in from work, having a beer in front of the TV and wondering whether I should bother calling anybody or just go to bed early, and the next I'm a 'guide' and I'm playing musical beds with three gorgeous men who are living in my house--even if only temporarily--two of whom I work with and one of whom I'm quite enamoured of. And two of whom I..."

"Could _get_ quite enamoured of?" Blair asked, eyebrows wiggling evilly, eyes twinkling.

"I think I'm already halfway there with you, at least," Brian admitted. He snuggled Blair close, hiding his face in the cloud of soft curls. "Cute stuff," he sighed. "I'd've called you something a lot more explicit if I hadn't been worried about the possibility of Jim and I being suspended for beating the shit out of each other in the bullpen."

"Jim wouldn't have taken exception to you calling me something sexy unless I did. He trusts me."

"Yeah, and here you are in bed with _me_."

"Right under his nose I'm in bed with you, not behind his back. Jim might rather sulk and play no-see-um-no-speak-um when he doesn't like something than talk openly about it, but I won't let him. We're both up-front about everything we feel. And I feel--" he kissed Brian softly. "--like you and me, like this, is good. And if Jim _didn't_ feel that way about it, I'd know. Hell, forget talking. By this time we're practically telepathic together."

"If you say so." Brian relaxed, letting Blair get comfortable on his smooth chest. "You're right," he said, after a quiet moment, as he stroked Blair's hair. "You and me like this is good."

Blair grinned. "Ain't it?"

 

* * *

"Jim?" Stephen barely whispered.

Jim jolted upright, hands all over Stephen in a heartbeat. "You okay?"

"Oh, for Christ's--" Stephen sat up, slapping Jim's hands away. "You're not going to find any problems that way, a spike isn't a broken rib. And you're never going to get any sleep like this. We'll just have to roust Brian and switch beds."

"No, no--don't wake them. If you're okay."

"I'm okay. Dials are holding." Stephen lay back down.

"I'm just...you haven't tried letting go of them and sleeping without Brian being with you."

"So you're going to stay up and watch me all night? It's stupid. Just go get Brian and climb in with Blair."

"No, I...I'm sorry, I guess I'm thinking more about what I want than about what's safest for you. I just...wanted to do this. _I_ wanted to...keep you safe, for a while. Not that I resent Brian, he's being far beyond great about this, but..."

Stephen laid his fingers gently on Jim's lips. "It's okay, Jim, I understand. But I promise you, if I start that damned cycling or whatever, I'm going to make sure the world knows it so fast even your senses monitoring me won't get the news any sooner. So just relax."

Jim lay down again, too.

"You know," Stephen reminded Jim, "Blair says the only way to set the dials and get them to hold during sleep is practice. I'm not saying I don't need Brian--I am, in fact, considering attaching myself to him with leg irons--but if I'm ever going to be able to function without him--and I mean function at all, not just as a sentinel--"

"I know," Jim said, gentling Stephen's obvious nervousness with the concept by stroking his hair. "But it's a little soon to just throw you into the big kid's pool with no backup, and...I guess I feel responsible for this, somehow."

"I know. Blair and I talked about that. I wish you wouldn't. If you want to blame someone, blame God. It's genetics at fault here, the same way they're at fault for the fact that no matter how many crunches I do, I can't get a six-pack nearly as defined as yours."

Jim's hand moved, caressing Stephen's taut belly lazily. "I like your abs just fine, Stevie."

"Mmm...that's nice. You have two days to stop."

Jim chuckled and slid over close. "I think you've had enough for one day. You need to get some rest."

"Jim..."

"Mm-hm?"

"There are some things I've been meaning to ask you..."

 

* * *

I guess it's not too surprising to anybody that I consider myself to be a pretty ass-kicking kind of guy.

I'm not tooting my horn, here. I mean, as a personality type. You kind of have to be when you're gay and you look like I do, if you're a cop. There is no such thing as a femmy cop. Not that I'm into roles or anything, they're boring. But considering the plethora of absolutely enormous guys where I work, I probably have the slightest build of any detective in the department, with the exception of Connor. I look like I'm nineteen at the outside. Anybody who heard I was gay would, on first glance, assume I'm a cream puff. Yeah, I know--so why do I dress like such a spit-and-polish poster boy? Why do I buff my nails and gel my hair? Because I can, that's why.

See, I'm never gonna make it as an Ellison type. I'm too pretty and I don't have that kind of sheer bulldozing bulk. His usual expression inspires fear; mine inspires big toothy grins. I have skin like Snow White. My eyes are good for come-ons, but lousy at shooting deadly glares. That being the case, you'd think that in order to survive in police work, I'd cultivate the butchest reputation I could, right? Macho bullshit all over the place? Belching and scratching and leering and using words like "hooters"? Dress like I wouldn't know a collar stay if it bit me on the ass?

I couldn't make it that way in a hundred years. _Me_ acting like that would just scream "overcompensating poofta" all over the landscape. So maybe I shouldn't have gone into police work, hm? Maybe instead something a little less likely to get me run over by the SWAT team's truck? Forget it. It's all I've ever wanted to do.

So here I am. I'm the youngest detective in Major Crimes. Actually, I'm the youngest of my rank in the whole damn PD. I'm gay--not bi, like Ellison and Sandburg, so I can't camouflage myself with a visible female-involved romantic history, or get myself "accidentally" caught making out with a woman, because I can't abide the idea of using somebody like that (though Megan's volunteered, good pal that she is) and there's no way I could be romantically interested in a woman. I'm even out to about half a dozen people there, including my captain (who has known ever since he opened the sink cabinet in my bathroom, looking for Kleenex, and three Fleets and a bottle of Astroglide fell out), and it doesn't worry me that someone might let something "suspicious" slip. I'm not stupid enough to go around volunteering the information to the station house in general; but I don't say anything I don't mean, just to fit into a conversation about sex or relationships. If anybody comments that I seem to be showing up stag a lot to police and social events and what's an attractive guy like me, etc., I don't tell them I've got a girlfriend in San Fran who'd be livid if I went out on her while she was gone. I tell 'em they oughta worry more about getting their own dates and stay out of my social life. I _have_ a social life, in which I am largely out, and I have it here in town, the same town where I work. And if anybody at work asked me outright if I were gay, I wouldn't lie. I wouldn't have to. Which would be impressive anywhere, let alone the damn PD.

How do I get away with it, you ask?

I am not a thousand pounds of he-man personality-wise, no--but I am the best fucking cop it's humanly possible for anybody (except sentinels, apparently) to be. I _made_ the police force accept me, and I made it accept me on _my_ terms. And if someday friendly fire takes me out or backup finds something better to do than cover my ass, at least I'll have lived my life as who I _am_ , doing what I believe in, never hiding, never lying. To me, it's worth the risk. You'd think someone who could pull off all that would be pretty hard to rattle.

Well, folks, I'm rattled.

In fact, I'm so rattled my teeth, by rights, should be sounding like a maraca.

"Guide"? What the fuck am I doing fooling with this whole concept? If I hadn't seen Stephen for myself, I would have dismissed this whole business as a weird joke cooked up by Blair. But anybody would have been able to see that Sandburg was right. Stephen was dying.

What a concept. Without me, Stephen will _die_. Slowly, maybe, but not that slowly. Weeks, at the outside, maybe less. And painfully.

I _like_ Stephen, don't get me wrong. I like Stephen a _lot_ , I think I could _love_ Stephen without straining anything much at all. I don't mind spending time with him; I don't mind being close to him.

For that matter, this being close to Blair like I am right now is pretty damn nice.

And Jim's starting to look a little more approachable, too...

Where was I?

Oh, yeah. Being with Stephen. Well, how are we gonna do this? Is Stephen gonna go to the Academy so he can be with me at work, or am I gonna quit the force and be his personal bodyguard? How many people sleep with their bodyguard? Hell, maybe I _will_ just marry him.

Not.

Oh, nothing against him. But there's gotta be another way. I refuse to marry anybody for the sole reason that they'll die without me. Babysit them, yes. Hang out with them, whatever. Marry them, no. Schist, I'm rambling and I'm not even talking out loud...

But what choice do I have? Blair is right. It just isn't in me to let _anybody_ die if there's any way I can stop it, and there's no way I'd even consider it in Stephen's case.

If I'd had the chance to fall in love with Stephen the usual way and _then_ this happened, that would be different. It would make _sense_ then.

But this...this is all just...just _nuts_.

Hm. Sandburg cuddles in his sleep. Feels nice.

I wonder if Jim and/or Stephen do that, too.

I think I'm losing my mind...

 

* * *

Brian's dozing internal monologue was cut off by a scream.

"BRIAN! GET IN HERE!"

Before the second scream could leave Stephen's throat, Brian and Blair both were in the room with Jim and Stephen, Brian flinging himself on the latter and pulling him to a sitting position in his arms. Stephen was clutching at his ears, face contorted. Brian's hands moved in soothing patterns over Stephen's shoulders and back, as Blair managed to get Stephen to open his eyes with the tap to the temple that meant that. Once he focused on Brian's face, he relaxed, then slumped.

"Can you hear me?" Brian whispered.

"Yeah," Stephen said, shuddering slightly. "It's back to normal now. Who would have thought the sound of my own heart could be so..."

"What happened?" Blair demanded. "What ruined your grip on the dial?"

Jim was looking desperately stricken. "It was my fault," he said quietly. "I said something...something that upset him. I guess he has the same problem hanging on to the dials that I do when I'm...agitated."

"Well for God's sake, what did you--"

"Jim. Go with Blair. I need some time," Stephen said quietly, his forehead resting on Brian's shoulder.

"Yeah, okay," Jim said, so contrite it was easy to see he felt like a total shit. "Stevie, believe me, I never meant...never meant to--"

"I know, Jim. It's okay. It's okay, just...give me a little space right now?"

"Yeah," Jim sighed, getting up without touching Stephen again. Just then Brian noticed that everybody present was naked. 'This is getting to be a bit much,' he thought with deliberate dry understatement. He closed his eyes and let his own forehead rest on Stephen, waiting for his heart to slow down.

"Come on," Blair said, taking Jim's arm. "You and I'll take Brian's bed."

When they'd gone, Brian said softly "Do you want to talk about it?"

"Um..."

"It might give me some insight into the kind of things that might affect your control."

"True," Stephen sighed. "It's...maybe it's kind of silly. I mean, all that time ago, and Jim's repressed so much, forgotten so much...but he told me that he remembered the entire time that we were lovers, that he'd never..." Stephen sighed. "I guess I better start over. Jim has a problem with memory repression of things that are traumatic, or connected to something else that's traumatic."

"Yeah, a lot of people do."

"I felt so much better when he said he remembered everything about us being together. It meant that even if he was having trouble dealing with it, it wasn't anything...bad to him, nothing he had to hide from himself." Stephen took a deep breath, then began again. "Jim and I were just kids--well, teenagers--and we were both virgins when we came to each other that way. Naturally we never did a number of the more advanced things that guys do together. If you follow me."

"Yeah, I think so. You're talking about actual fucking, right?"

Stephen winced.

"Sorry. I know the term's a little indelicate, but I didn't know how else to put it without sounding like a manual on gay sex."

"Right. Well, anyway, that's not quite true. We _did_...do that, once. Just once. It was the day he left. I knew he was going, he'd told me the night before. At first, when my flight out with my Dad was delayed and he came to talk to me again, I wouldn't even look at him...but he promised me he'd come back, and I knew I had to be with him one more time."

Stephen paused at that point, his gaze focused somewhere in the middle distance in the dimly lit room. Brian waited, adjusting their posture so they'd be a little more comfortable. His hand kept up a slow stroking over Stephen's shoulders.

"We _knew_ about the other things you could do, of course. If nothing else, we heard all about it from the kids at school telling each other gross-out stories about it. I used to get really uncomfortable with that kind of thing. Everybody thought it was because I was so disgusted by it, but of course it was because I was _doing_ most of it. I knew there was nothing intrinsically gross about it..."

"I know where you're coming from. I knew in the womb I was gay. It's not an easy way to grow up, as if any of us had a choice about it."

Stephen nodded and inhaled, continuing "So we knew about it. I managed to get my hands on a novel about two gay men at one point; I got away with it because it was science fiction, an actual story, not a porn novel with an incriminating title or anything explicit on the cover. So not only did I know you _could_ do it, I knew, theoretically at least, _how_ to do it, and that it was supposed to feel _really_ good, at least for some people.

"Jim was leaving, he'd be gone for years..." Stephen stopped again.

"You asked him to make love to you before he left," Brian said softly, recalling Stephen's reaction to the word "fuck". Brian found himself a little turned off by the harshness as well, considering how young Stephen had been at the time, and how emotionally oriented the sex had plainly been.

Stephen nodded, but didn't say anything else.

"Did he?"

Another nod.

There was a long quiet stretch.

Brian's eyes closed in chagrin. "And he forgot. He repressed it, didn't he."

Stephen hid his face in Brian's neck. Brian's arms came around him tight. " _Major_ ouch," Brian murmured. "I'm sorry you had to find that out, Stephen. That has to hurt."

"Maybe I'm being childish," Stephen said. "He didn't repress the whole memory. He remembers going to bed with me, just not...that. And it's not like it's the only memory Jim's ever repressed."

"How did it come up? How did you find out?"

"Well...I haven't been with a man since Jim; he's got a lot more experience than I do, and with this thing with...well, with you and me..."

Brian smiled a little. "You were asking him for pointers? It's okay, Stephen. I'm good with virgins. And near-virgins."

"That's good to hear, but I still wanted some information before I went diving into bed with a guy who wasn't Jim. I know some guys aren't into...that--schist, I can't even say it now, get over it, Ellison--and I figured there were reasons for that, and wanted to know the best way to talk about that kind of thing, what the accepted courtesies are. I asked Jim if he still...still did that. Since the one time that we did."

"And got an incredulous look in response."

"More of a blank stare. Then he blurted 'Stephen, we never made love like that.' Then _I_ got a blank look, I imagine...and then I realized what had happened...and I very coldly and plainly told him about it, how it had gone. How I convinced him without too much effort. How I explained to him what to do, and brought the hand lotion we used from the hall closet. I still think of that time when I smell roses; it was scented with them." His voice trailed off, his head falling again.

Brian felt his throat clench and his eyes sting.

"He was so gentle. Holding me, going slow...telling me I was so beautiful, so wonderful, that he loved me, would always love me...I felt...transported. It was like nothing I'd ever felt, so _full_ of him, in more ways than that one."

Brian squeezed him close again.

"I have a lot of good memories," Stephen said quietly. "A lot of _great_ memories. But that one was always the most precious...and he..."

"I don't have a crying hang-up, Stephen," Brian said softly. "Go ahead and let it out."

"It's stupid," Stephen said thickly. "Jim remembers it now, now that I told him, and he's horrified with himself. But I don't know if he's more horrified he forgot something that was so important to me, to _us_...or that he let me find out that he had. Either way, he's doing a lot worse than kicking himself. I couldn't _make_ him feel any worse than he does. So why do I still want to kill him?"

"I don't blame you. Anybody would be hurt by something like that."

"Why _that_ one? Why not any of the others? Everything else we did together was fine, but the thought of doing _that_ with his brother was too much to stomach? He wasn't grossed out while it was happening, I can tell you that. He was as into it as I was."

"Well...I'm no pop psychologist like Sandburg, but it seems to me that maybe he couldn't have faced being without you for so long with a memory like that. Maybe he didn't repress it because it was traumatic, but because _losing_ that with you was too traumatic to take, so he blanked the memory, so he wouldn't have to deal with that loss."

"I'd like to believe that."

"I think you can. From what you've told me about the two of you, and the things I see when I look at you together now, he can't have loved you or wanted you any less than you did him."

"You know, Brian," Stephen said, sniffing back a sob and wiping his eyes, "I think you're going to do pretty well with this guide thing."

Brian smiled. "I hope so. Let's lie down and get some rest; it's still the dead of night."

 

concluded in the next chapter

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

This story has been split into three parts for easier loading

## A Lovers' Farewell VI: Love Will Prevail

by [Blue Champagne](mailto:bluecham@aa.net)  


Author's webpage: [http://members.aa.net/~bluecham/](http://members.aa.net/%7Ebluecham/)

Author's disclaimer: I don't own anybody. Making no money. Have no money. The usual.

Author's notes: Scroll down to the bottom for the spoiler warning. It is NOT for any form of BDSM or noncon.

 

* * *

A LOVER'S FAREWELL VI: Love Will Prevail -- Part Three

"You know why, Jim. Hell, you probably started blanking it the second you woke up in bed with Stevie afterward. There's no other way you could have made yourself walk out that door, after _that_."

"That's what I keep telling myself, but I don't think Stevie sees it that way. God...I hurt him again. I hurt him _again_. Am I _ever_ gonna stop hurting him?"

"Jim." Blair pulled Jim down to the pillow. "Don't start losing it on me, here. Keep your head. It wasn't your fault, and Stephen will see that when he's had time to get over the shock. If he's still hurting in the morning, I'll talk to him. You know he'll listen to me."

Jim sighed, and was quiet a long time.

Blair had nearly drifted off when Jim whispered "He cried."

"Mm?" Blair said, eyes fluttering open again. Jim was lying on his back, staring up into the dark.

"He cried," Jim repeated in the same toneless whisper. "He held my hand to his face while we made love, kissing it, saying he loved me, over and over..."

"Ah, geez," Blair groaned in sympathy, and pulled Jim close against him. "You've got to forgive yourself, Jim."

"How could I _forget_ that? The tears trickling over my palm, his mouth against my skin...'love you, Jimmy, love you always...so full of you...love you..."

"Shhh, Jim. Shut it down, now. Let it go...let your mind go blank...just breathe...I've got you..." Blair sighed. "You two may have each other back, finally...but you're not through with all this by a long shot." He closed his eyes, sighing, and began running through a meditation.

"Blair."

"Mm."

"I just wanted...I love you."

"I love you too." He squeezed Jim absently. "Should I make you some chamomile tea or anything?"

"No. Listen--this whole thing with Stephen--Stephen's and my thing, I mean--I just didn't want you to...if it were me, I'd probably be..."

God, poor Jim. "Jim, listen. I know you love me. I seem to recall us having a little ceremony that didn't include any clauses along the lines of 'forsaking all others', because both of us had reservations about the advisability of insisting one's partner swear either to love or _not_ to love, since--while it may sound nice and romantic--we both know that that kind of thing isn't really in a person's power to make happen or not happen, and we both react pretty negatively to the concept of love as ownership, anyway. What we swore was that we loved each other and wanted to be each other's life partner. What we promised to give each other forever was respect and honesty. I'm willing to bet none of the feelings behind all that have changed at your end of things. Do you think anything's changed on mine?"

"God, no." Jim pulled himself around to cling to Blair's shoulders. Blair knew that Jim intended the words as a denial, but they almost sounded like an entreaty. He squeezed Jim close.

"Right. So neither of us have anything to be worried about, do we? We already talked about you and Stephen. If it needs more talk--and it will--it can wait until we're sure Stephen's life isn't in danger. Right now, he's our focus. He's _everybody's_ focus, mine too, not just yours. Okay? Can you accept that I don't have a problem with that, or with you two?"

"I can, I just..."

Blair sighed. Jim might seem to some people to be the more emotionally independant of the two of them, but Blair was the more secure in that arena, and probably always would be. Jim's difficulty of the moment most likely resulted from the fact that he couldn't understand why Blair wasn't feeling the same insidious, creeping insecurity Jim would be, in Blair's place. "Please, Jim. Take my word for it. It's going to be okay."

"I'll _always_ love you, Blair. You'll never be any less to me than you were the day we promised those things."

"Shhh..." Blair gently calmed Jim's whispered fervor. "I know. And I'll always love you." He stroked Jim's soft fuzzy head. "Sleep, okay? Let's both get some sleep...everything else can wait...just relax...shhh..."

 

* * *

The next day after breakfast, Stephen announced he felt pretty much recovered from his ordeal, and Blair immediately swooped upon him with a large wad of notebooks, printed-up documents and test results from his work with Jim. "I think you may have some abilities Jim didn't when his senses first came on-line. I'd like to try a few things to check that out. Brian, Jim, we'll need your help..."

 

* * *

"It's getting...I don't know, echoey. Kind of tinny-sounding, almost."

"But you can still hear his voice clearly? Any trouble tuning out interfering sounds?"

Stephen reached up to touch Brian's hand where it rested on his shoulder, as though for reassurance. "Not so far."

"What's he saying?"

"He's still reciting 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'--hold it."

 _Can you still hear me, Stephen_?

"He just asked if I could still hear him." Stephen's expression was animated, interested. "Yeah, Jim, can you hear _me_?"

 _Sure. I'm focused on the parlor_.

"Jim, where are you now?" Blair asked, pen at the ready.

_At the corner of the cross street at the end of the block. There are houses between us, Stevie, that's what that tinny, echoey effect is. The sound waves of my voice are being broken up and amplified through the structures._

"What would it sound like if...if we had a clear line-of-sight, but you were on one hill in a high wind and I was on the hill next to it?"

 _Like the volume on a radio being turned up and down_.

"Stephen, where does he say he is?"

"Sorry--he's at the corner down there at the end of the street. He was explaining a couple of things."

"Okay, Jim, come back, but head around the block. I want to see if Stephen can tell which direction your voice is coming from with a variety of interfering objects in the way."

 _Right, Chief_.

"He says he's on his way."

"Oh, and Jim--when we pause to check direction, tell him what sort of landscape is between you and us--you know, broad cement ball courts, stands of trees, different kinds of buildings--so he can start on being able to recognize that kind of thing."

 _Okay_.

"He says okay."

"Now what's he doing?"

"He's singing the U-Dub fight song. Jesus, Jim, give me a break...and...he's moving." Stephen got up and kind of scanned around, as if he were watching for Jim instead of listening for him. "That way. To the west..."

 

* * *

"Now what we're going to do here, since you tell me you don't already know the smells of that many spices, is I'm going to have you smell them, then taste the water and try to tell me which one I put into it."

"I can _do_ that?" Stephen wondered.

"Stephen, _I_ can do that," Blair said, smiling reassuringly, "if there's enough of the spice in the water, that is. I'll only use about a tweezer's worth for you. Anyway, the point here is to learn how well, at this point, you can coordinate taste and smell, and incidentally how far up you can turn those senses without making yourself gag--and how well you can tune out other smells and tastes and look for a single specific one."

Stephen looked scared. "I'm not in the mood for another pukefest, Blair."

"When you couldn't get anything down," Blair reminded him gently, nodding his head toward the quiet but ever-present Rafe, " _he_ still wasn't a factor. And he _is_ a factor; I'm having to file all this data under 'Stephen's Abilities _in_ the Presence of His Guide'. Your abilities without him are going to be a whole different kettle of fish. It is in Jim's case, and it's likely going to be even more marked in yours."

"Blair, you're scaring him," Jim muttered, coming through behind them to get a cup of coffee.

"Sorry, Stephen. Like I said, we're not nearly ready to cut you loose from Brian yet. Okay, here's the first ones, you probably know them already--oregano, cinnamon, and paprika. Give them each a sniff, remember the smells, take a breath through your nose away from the spices to clear the scent out, and then take a sip of the water..."

 

* * *

"Shhh...that's right...concentrate...see your hands...all your skin is glowing very softly, but your hands are glowing just a little brighter...are you seeing it? Hold the image...now your hands are brighter again, slowly increasing...just stay relaxed..."

Stephen sat on his knees on the floor in his room, with a variety of objects in a box on the floor in front of him. Brian sat behind him with his hand on his shoulder. Blair sat cross-legged nearby.

"Keep your eyes closed...okay. Right in front of you is a sheet of newspaper. I want you to touch it and tell me what the headline says..."

"Blair--"

"Shhh. Don't lose the image. Jim usually can't do this, but I think you can. I think you'll be able to sense a difference in the texture of inked and uninked newsprint--it's pretty low-grade paper. Take it easy...breathe...hold the image...now give it a try..." Brian reached over and gently took Stephen's wrist, setting his hand on the page, fingertips down.

"Take your time," Blair said softly.

Stephen's fingers stroked the newsprint, aimlessly at first; then his brow furrowed slightly and his questing fingers focused in on one letter. There was another long moment.

"Is this a T?" he asked.

"Hey hey _hey_!" Blair crowed jubilantly as Brian grabbed Stephen's shoulders to squeeze him. Stephen opened his eyes just in time to see Blair about to give him five.

"Blair! Watch the hands, dammit!"

"Oh, right--sorry, I got excited. Okay. Usually I'm better than that--um, let's all settle down and try one of these other little items here. Close your eyes and check your visualization. Hands still turned up?"

"Um...yeah."

"I had to teach Jim to do this when he couldn't turn up touch without screaming in anguish because his clothes, occasionally even stray air currents, were killing him. Later maybe we can start teaching you to turn the various different _kinds_ of message neurons up or down, like he can do. Okay, we have here a croquet ball, and I don't think you'll have any trouble telling how many stripes are on it, because the paint gives you some thickness to detect as well as textural difference..."

 

* * *

"Don't zone."

"I'm not zoning. I'm concentrating."

"We should have picked something else," Jim said, shaking his head. "Crystals are _pretty_."

"He won't be zooming in on them long," Blair said in impatient reassurance. "Okay Stephen, which is it? The left or the right?"

"That one," Stephen said instantly, pointing. "That's the natural one."

"How could you tell?"

"There are tiny flaws in it. The synthetic one is perfect all the way down to the level I zoomed to."

"There, see, Jim? I just wanted to start him with an easy one. Okay, check these out. Which is the real diamond and which is the zirconia?"

"This is the diamond," Stephen said immediately, lifting the earring in his right hand.

"How could you tell? Flaws? Impurities?"

"The bounce angle of the light through it is wrong. The cut of both stones is the same, but you can see...I mean, Jim and I can see--that the refraction angle of the light in the zirconia is...different..." he trailed off, eyes starting to glaze.

"Stephen," Brian said, covering Stephen's eyes with one hand. "Don't zone."

Stephen sighed, and Brian lowered his hand. "It's so _interesting_."

"We know, Stevie," Jim said, smiling. "I have an idea. Come outside with me."

Stephen, who'd been about to get up, abruptly took his seat again. "No."

"I'll stay with you," Brian said, reaching for his hand.

"So will I, for that matter," Blair said, looking at Jim, puzzled. "Just what did you have in mind?"

"Trust me. This is interesting too, but not nearly the zone temptation."

They all trooped out to the rolling garden/park of a back yard, Brian holding Stephen's hand. Stephen still looked nervous. Jim led them to a huge old holly tree with low, spreading branches. "Okay, these have sharp points, so watch for those, but if you stay away from them you'll be fine. Turn touch up a little and feel a leaf."

Stephen eyed Jim a moment, then stepped away from Brian and did so. "It feels...waxy."

"That's the cuticle. It protects the flesh. It's more pronounced on holly leaves, but all leaves have it. Now turn touch up a little more...what do you feel?"

"It's...not as smooth. There are little...pockets or something..."

"Okay. Now zoom in on the leaf. Don't worry, leaves are a lot easier to stomach looking at that closely than humans are."

"If you say so...hey, you're...Jim, what am I seeing?"

"You're close to the cell-structure level. Be sure not to move your eyes until you turn down again. Do you see the little pockets?"

"Yeah. They look kind of like...little mouths..."

Jim chuckled. "If I remember my high school biology correctly, they're called stoma, and actually that word means 'mouth'. They're what the tree breathes through, takes in carbon dioxide and gives off oxygen through. Okay, zoom back out..."

Stephen stood there a moment, blinking. "Wow. That _was_ interesting."

"Wanna see another one?" Jim smiled, touching Stephen's shoulder to turn him away from the tree.

"Sure. But I think Blair'll want to take notes." Blair was, in fact, doing just that.

 

* * *

About four hours worth of tests and experiments later, Stephen had a headache and a bad attitude, Blair had writer's cramp and a new entirely-filled notebook, and Brian and Jim had the munchies. They were in the kitchen making salads and burgers while Stephen took a nap and Blair typed his new information into his files.

"So...how do you think it's going so far?" Rafe asked as he shredded spinach.

Jim was mixing spices into the ground beef. "Blair says it's going great. But we have yet to address the question..."

"Of me not being within earshot of Stephen. We still don't know if he's going to be like you--though maybe more sensitive in some ways--or if he's going to be a basket case if he stays away from me too long. Believe me, _I've_ been addressing it."

"Blair says he has hopes that there's something about you that allows Stephen to just use you as a...a crutch or whatever, or a pressure suit, while whatever's wrong sorts itself out. He says Stephen might only need more adjustment time, considering his particular situation--whatever that is, exactly."

"We can all fervently hope that," Rafe muttered. "I think I could care for Stephen in a very big way, that's no secret to anybody who knows us both that I'm out to, but _this_...it feels like an arranged marriage. If I can't _ever_ be too far from him without endangering his life...even discounting both our job situations--"

"As Naomi would say, I'm hearing you, Rafe."

"Remember," Brian continued muttering as he worked savagely at the spinach, "it's not like Blair and you. I only even found out about this sentinel thing a few days ago, and it's certainly not my life's passion. Yeah, I'm interested, and I'm certainly putting everything I've got into learning about it, but that's because my priority here is saving Stephen's life. If we're stuck with each other for a while, okay, we'll cope. Hell, I wouldn't mind having him move in if he wanted to--to tell you the truth, this huge old place can get a little lonely and creepy, even as many good memories as I have of growing up with it. But still--"

"I understand," Jim repeated, glancing toward the other end of the kitchen where Blair typed on, oblivious. "We're not considering having an umbilical installed between you two as an option, either, but as much research as we've done, we have yet to find anything that'll tell us if Stephen will adjust functionally to this or not. All we can do is keep trying."

The glassine strains of the doorbell chimed in the front hall.

"You expecting anybody?" Jim asked as he and Blair both looked up.

"No," Brian said, wiping his hands on a towel and moving through the kitchen toward the front hall and its oaken double-doors. "I told my cleaning service to lie out for a week, and the only people who know that anyone's here right now..."

As the door opened, Jim, who hadn't moved from the stove, relaxed. "It's Simon and Megan."

"Captain, Connor," came Rafe's voice. "Come on in. We're just making lunch--burgers and salads. Want to join us? There's plenty."

"Ooh, Jim's burgers," Megan said as she came in, and leaned over the pan, sniffing appreciatively. "Love 'em."

Simon came in, looking grumpy but fairly quiet. "Yeah, I could eat, thanks," he said shortly. "So where's our man of the hour?"

"Taking a nap," Rafe said. "Poor guy is threadbare. Connor, would you chop these cucumbers? I want to go check on him."

"Sure," she said, after setting her purse on the table and patting Blair's head. "Hi, Sandy. How are you holding up?"

"Better now that we have Brian," Blair sighed, turning and resting his head against her middle for a moment. She scratched his curls like scratching a cat, and Blair sighed and closed his eyes.

"Hedonist," Jim chuckled.

 

* * *

Brian went upstairs to Stephen's room. The door was cracked open slightly; he went in quietly.

Stephen was lying on his back, gazing at the ceiling. Rafe prepared to crack down on a possible zone when Stephen's eyes turned to him and he smiled. "I heard Simon and Megan's voices."

"Yeah, they're downstairs in the kitchen. Sound kind of carries from there through the front hall and up the stairwell."

Stephen smiled. "I heard their voices in the _car_ ," he clarified.

Brian smiled too.

"In the car three _blocks_ from here," Stephen finished, and grinned back at Brian as he swung his legs down and sat up.

"That's great," Brian said. "Really great." He sat down next to Stephen, sliding an arm over his shoulders. "What tipped you off?"

"Well, I woke up...and the first thing I was aware of was your heartbeat. It doesn't sound like mine, or Jim's or Blair's or anyone else's I've been able to listen to so far. It was like I...was listening to it in my sleep, to stay...to keep the dials set at normal." As he had once before, he reached out and laid his hand on Brian's chest softly, then let it fall and continued "So then I started kind of...listening around. Like following Jim, having to keep tuning other sounds out. But this time, I just went from one sound, to the next sound, to the next...I guess I just kind of tripped over the sound of their voices while I was doing that."

"No zoning?"

"Not even the threat of it. Until the doorbell rang. Those chimes...a million levels of tone in each one, and I could pick out all of them..."

"Well, fortunately they're a zone threat that stops automatically. Were you going to come down and be sociable? Simon knows what you were going through, and by now Megan likely does, too--they're worried."

"Yeah, sure. Headache's mostly gone, I think it was just tension. Um, Brian...listen. I know that...shit. There's no way to say this that isn't a cliche."

"Were you about to say that you know how sudden this is?"

"And that I really appreciate it. All of it."

"You heard what I was telling Jim in the kitchen, didn't you," Brian said dryly.

"Um. Yes."

"Don't feel bad about it, Stephen. I was just blowing off some worry. Whatever it is you are--my friend's brother, _my_ friend, my...whatever the hell it is you'd call it--or a sentinel...if you need me, I'm here. Don't doubt that, just because I bitch about having been so gobsmacked, okay? Promise me."

Stephen smiled. Those Ellison smiles, Brian thought wonderingly. They could melt lead. "Sure. I promise."

"I've _got_ to remember that you can do that now," Brian said, "you and Jim both, though I always knew Jim was a little spooky, if not just why." He stood up and held his hand out to Stephen, who took it and rose, saying "Let me clean up a little. I still look kind of like death on a platter, and I just woke up."

"Sure. Lunch should be ready by the time you come down."

 

* * *

There was much patting of Stephen and inquiries as to his current state of health, to which he gave the expected reassurances, and everyone fell to, making conversation about the situation between appreciative bites. Megan was no liar; if Jim could cook one thing, it was a gourmet hamburger to die for. She'd stood next to the pan, slicing tomatoes, sniffing unabashedly until Simon said she was worse than Jim himself, sucking up all the air in the room at an intriguing smell.

"Yeah, I think we can help you get the tests scheduled," Simon was saying as he patted his mouth with a napkin. "We'll put together an identity for you to use. The only problem is having to cough up the cost out of pocket, and you'll probably never see it from your insurance company."

Stephen waved a negating hand as he got up to start clearing the table. "That's not a problem."

"And I can see that the tests are scheduled without a physician's reference," Megan added. "I know people in the administration there. If I tell them it's a police matter and we'd like an exception made, they won't ask questions. I'll do a Sandy and _imply_ that you're a protected witness who's fallen sick very suddenly. We can get the hospital to do the evaluations, too."

"How do we arrange to have _me_ in on that?" Blair wanted to know.

"You're a family member," Jim shrugged. "He'll be under an assumed identity anyway."

"Do Stephen and I look _anything_ alike to you?" Blair deadpanned.

"Okay, he's your husband. Let's see 'em try to make a stink about _that_ after that lawsuit last year," Simon suggested.

"Good point. So, when can you guys roll on this?"

"We can start as soon as we get back to the station," Megan said.

Getting up, Simon said "Thanks for lunch, Jim--I'm gonna go see if the damn car is gonna start for us. If not, there's a little dance I have to do to the distributor gods before we can get out of here."

"Sure, Simon."

As he went out, Megan added "It might take a day or two for all the documents on the identity to come through, and I'll have to wait to hear back from admin. Oh, bloody good burgers, Jim. Good on you."

"I should make you more of them. You're too thin."

"Bite your tongue." Connor was watching Brian, who had excused himself and was on the back patio, going through a slow Tai Chi routine; he wore a brief pair of cutoff CPD sweatpants and an aura of serenity.

Blair noticed the direction of her gaze as he started helping Stephen rinse dishes. "Megan, you're into martial arts. Can _you_ tell me why he does that with his eyes closed? He doesn't _fight_ with his eyes closed."

"He's training his balance. Assuming those positions, going from one to the next, without your eyes to help you reference where all your body parts are in relation to each other and the ground, is a job to do accurately. Or even inaccurately. I don't do Tai Chi, but I know that in some ways, it's even more pronounced in emphasis on balance, centering, leverage, that kind of thing, than many other forms. Aikido is, as well, but for different reasons." She stopped gazing placidly at Brian and looked back over at Blair. "Have you ever noticed that if Rafe has any warning about it at all, not even three charging goons can knock him over? He can place his weight, adjust his center, balance it all so well that he might as well be a wall. They hit and just bounce off. _Love_ the looks on the poor buggers' faces when he does that." She snickered.

"He said he had an aunt who was a strongwoman," Blair pondered idly.

Megan nodded quickly. "Yeah, there's some of the same kind of idea there, though there's a whole yogic aspect to the strongwoman thing too, I'm told. I get most of it theoretically, but...I saw a strongwoman at a magic show once. I could see how she could apply tricks of balance and joint placement and all to lift things three times her weight--she couldn't have been over five feet tall--but I'll never figure out this one: They'd have some big man come up from the audience and pick her up by the waist, nice and easy, and set her down again. Then she'd 'resist' him. The ones that got her in the air at all only got her up a few inches. It was like she suddenly weighed a ton."

Jim frowned. "Now _that's_ not possible. There must have been some other trick involved, or the audience members were plants."

Megan shrugged. "Maybe so. But you know I've seen some strange, strange things...psychic phenomena, men who can feel a storm coming half a day away and see in the dark..."

Jim threw the rag he was wiping the counters with at her. "Take off, Connor; I just heard Simon start the engine."

She caught the rag and threw it back. "Good luck, all of you. Especially you, Stephen."

"Thanks, Megan--I haven't forgotten about that sixty bucks from the last poker game," he reminded her, eyes twinkling, "but still, thanks."

She stuck her tongue out at him and went out.

Stephen had sat down at the table and was gazing at Brian. Megan's regard had been evaluative, approving; Stephen's was mesmerized.

"You're not zoning," Jim cautioned him as he and Blair finished cleaning up. "Are you?"

"No. Just drooling." Stephen smiled a little. "You're a Rodin, Jim. Blair's more Michaelangelo. Brian's...like nothing I've ever seen."

"Apollo," Blair said softly. When Jim looked at him, Blair said "I saw a statue of Apollo once, I don't remember the artist. Instead of showing him driving the usual chariot, this artist had him running across the sky, spreading the light behind him. Whoever he used for a model looked an awful lot like Brian."

Like Apollo, Brian was shining, too. His skin gave back light like polished old ivory, following each graceful wave and ripple of lean muscle.

At that moment, the sun god happened to open his eyes, notice his highly interested audience, lose it and fall on his ass.

The other three broke up as Brian got to his feet, a pretend-glower on his face. He opened one of the patio doors and said "Did I put up a poster saying 'Free One-Man Tai Chi Revue'?"

"Ah, quit whining. You're just irresistible, baby," Jim said in his favorite teasing tone. "Got all the moves."

"Bite me, Ellison," Brian muttered, coming in.

"Don't let us stop you," Stephen said hastily. "Or were you done?"

"Pretty much. My concentration's shot anyway. What's next up, Blair?"

"Next up is some exercise for Stephen. He needs to rest the fine-tuned concentrating he's been doing all morning and get his blood moving; excercise always helps Jim's senses straighten out when he's been overcerebrating. Think you could take him for a walk, Brian?"

Stephen gave him a look. "Geez, Blair. You make it sound like it's gonna be complete with leash."

"I just mean," Blair said patiently, "that he'd need to go with you. You were right, it's a high-stimulus world out there, and just because you're doing okay in the yard doesn't mean the rest of the world is as peaceful."

"Actually," Brian offered. "I have a weight room. It's the one at the end of the hall past the third right turn around the stairwell."

"You put your weight room all the way up _there_?" Blair wondered, his nose wrinkling in distaste. "Ouch, man, way to go boldly in search of hernia."

"Actually I made Jim move everything in for me." Brian grinned.

"I _helped_ ," Jim corrected. "Joel, Brian's brother and I did it. He put them up there because it was the only room big enough that was already empty--most of this stuff has been in the house for..."

"Ever," Brian conceded. "I remember looking at these rooms--all the antiques, the curtains, the embarrassing velvet-flower wallpaper, the light through the cut glass windows--from the inside of a bassinet. I just haven't been able to bring myself to dump very much of it, though I gave some away to relatives who expressed an interest. In what used to be the grand dining room at the end of that hall--" he pointed, "--which is one of two rooms that go up through both stories of the house and the garret-room level, there's one of those gigantic storage-cabinet/sideboard things, the ones that are literally two stories high; you have to bring them in in sections and stack them. With big drawers and little drawers and big cabinets and swing-out lazy susan storage and rows of _tiny_ little drawers and open storage shelves and you-name-it. They have built-in ladders on tracks to get to the top levels. All hand-carved satin-finished mahogany. It looks like a cathedral. It's _beautiful_ , but what in the name of God am I gonna _do_ with it? Except pay someone to keep it cleaned and polished, that is."

"You could rent it as apartment space," Blair, the college student, pointed out.

Brian cracked up. "That's the most practical idea I've heard so far. Come on, let's go sweat."

 

* * *

"It's only _thirty pounds_ and it's a _dumbbell,_ " Stephen protested again. "You don't need to spot me!"

"Jim?" Blair sighed.

"Stephen," Jim grunted, flat on his back where he was doing chest presses with Brian spotting him, "if your hand suddenly goes numb, that thirty pound piece of iron will go bouncing across this room like a rubber ball. I know. It happened to me once. I nearly broke someone's ankle, let alone almost crushing my own foot."

"You won't even know I'm here," Blair tried to assure the younger Ellison, who still looked sour.

He leaned over the bicep ledge and got started on his curls. Blair had both hands lightly at either end of the dumbbell, following along with the movement. "This is humiliating," moaned Stephen.

"You do look pretty stupid," Brian snickered.

"Shut up, Brian," Stephen and Blair both said as Jim snorted back a laugh, sublimating it into a whuff of exhale-on-the-effort.

 

* * *

Jim and Stephen had gone off to shower; Blair and Brian were still finishing up, taking turns spotting each other with the heavier barbells.

"Um, Brian..."

"Um, Blair?"

"Can I ask you a personal question?"

"Well, you can ask. God knows things are getting personal enough around here to make it appropriate."

"Did you ever have any tests done yourself, when your sister was diagnosed with MS?"

Brian was quiet a while; Blair finished his reps and Brian set the barbell back on the rest. Then, as Blair was sitting up, he said "This doesn't leave the house, all right?"

"All right." Blair got up and moved to spot Rafe.

As he lay down on the bench, Brian thought. Beginning the set, he finally spoke, on the exhales. "Yeah. I did. Yeah, they found something. No, they couldn't tell me...what."

"Something? Just _something_? There must have been more to it than... _something_."

"Could have been MS. Could have been MS related. There was a whole list...of things it _could_ have been."

"What was their advice?"

"Come in for checks...once a year. So long as I was...asymptomatic, don't think about it...otherwise. Kind of thing can be...almost anything or...nothing. Look, if even that much gets out...I'm gonna be flying a desk for the...rest of my career. Wouldn't let...me out on the street with...a gun."

"But you're asymptomatic! There wasn't even a real diagnosis, just '...something that may or may not eventually turn into something else that we can't give a name to.' No diagnosis and no symptoms, there's no basis for that action. Hell, most likely you won't _ever_ develop symptoms if they checked you for hidden signs for the various whatevers they suspected, and you still didn't have any."

"True...but I...prefer not to take the...chance. Keep it...to yourself...or Jim...or Stephen."

"Well, sure. I mean, it's your business, after all. You did say you're getting checked every so often?"

"Of course...sooner they get to things...sooner they can...slow 'em down...the ones that can be...slowed down, at least."

"What are they doing for your sister?"

Brian huffed through the rest of the set, and let Blair help him set the barbell up. "Interferon injections," he said, shrugging sadly. "There's damn little else they can do proactively for MS; there are medications to treat symptoms as they appear, though."

"I'm really sorry about Carol, Brian."

"Actually, she could be worse off. I have a lot to be grateful for. She was diagnosed and became symptomatic late. She's mostly functional, got a lot of mobility considering the lesion load in her brain--so far that's where the only discernable degeneration is. Her eyes are still fine." Brian was changing the weight level on the legwork bench.

"You ever worry about you? You know..."

"What time is it?" Brian lay down and commenced hamstring curls.

"Oh. I guess I can't blame you."

"There a reason you asked me this? Just because of Carol?"

"Well..." Blair proceeded to explain the theory he'd been talking about with Jim the previous day.

"So I can help Stephen because I'm sick?"

"No, no--I don't know. It's just a wild-hair hypothesis at this point. In fact, all I've _got_ about that are wild-hair hypotheses. I can't work with no data."

"I believe Mr. Spock once said that a lack of data is not...urff...the same thing as no information," Brian said.

Blair grinned. "I believe you're right, he did. And I do have information. But nothing I can run experiments on...the one thing I _could_ do would be separate the two of you and closely monitor what happened. That would give me data, all right. It might also give me a dead brother-in-law. At the very least it would give me a homicidally pissed-off husband."

"Well, we can't...grf...have that," Brian agreed.

"But you're right, I do have some observations," Blair said, moving to a crunch bench. "For one thing, when Stephen has a spike or a zone, you can, as it were, appeal to _any_ of his senses, and they _all_ come back on line--we haven't seen what would happen if you were with him during a cutout, but I think we can safely assume, since spikes and cutouts are both aspects of uncontrolled cycling, the same thing would apply. All he has to do is see you, feel you, hear you, anything. Probably taste and smell, too."

"Are you sure about that? I mean, I always touch him. So far, at least. I haven't seen him do a touch spike, so I always grabbed for him instinctively, like I do with my sister."

"That's true, but he described to me the sensation when you pulled him out of that spike at the loft--the sound of your voice, he said. The sight of your face. He didn't mention the touch, though it still could have been a factor. Anyway, that's a far cry from back when I had to sit up with Jim for hours playing musical spikes. His sight would spike, I'd talk to him. So his ears would spike, and I'd stroke him. So he'd get a rash, and I'd dump him in an oatmeal bath and tear my hair and curse Richard Burton's ghost. Stephen's bypassing a lot of stages...but if you hadn't come along, he'd never have survived to enjoy the fact."

"Yeah," Brian sighed, sitting up. "I know. Believe me, I know. Listen...maybe we're trying to...I don't know how to put this, I don't have the terminology. Could it be that it just doesn't do any good to compare Stephen with Jim or Barnes? Could all...could all sentinels just be unique? Or maybe there are several different kinds, even if they're not all unique. Maybe Stephen's _normal_ and we just don't know it."

"I've thought of that...unngh..." Blair finished his crunch set and sat up on the bench, legs still draped over the rests. "I have, really. But there's no question about it; if we hadn't lucked into you and whatever you've got, Stephen would have been dead within about a week of the onset of his abilities. I grant you that like any other late-onset deadly trait, it could be passed between generations--see, Stephen is thirty-five. There's no reason for this to have prevented him from having children by this time. In fact, the average life span of a human in the wild _is_ thirty-five years; in primitive civilization it was a bit higher than that, but this is for sure--all other things being equal, Stephen would have had kids by now, some of whom carried this trait. It's also not unlikely Stephen, having spread the fruit of his loins about the tribe, would have kicked off before now from a sinus infection or drinking bad water or something anyway, so the characteristic would never have shown up in him at all...and his kids would still be carrying it."

"So, yeah. Like I said."

"No, I mean, maybe this _is_ a malfunction, a genetic fluke that seldom has had the chance to be manifested until emerging in the modern western world, where the average lifespan is twice what it was back when. And since this can be so deadly so quickly, and most people who manifested it would just have wound up in the hospital with no one having a clue what was wrong with them--if they even made it _that_ far..."

"So Stephen may be one of only a few--or maybe the only one--with this...mistake in his sentinel programming to have survived."

"Yeah," Blair sighed, getting off the bench. "See what I mean? I can hypothesize until Christ comes again to point out that the bible doesn't say word one about birth control, thank you very much. But I can't do anything without data. For what it's worth, you could be right. Sentinel abilities _could_ , sometimes, or even usually, manifest very idiosyncratically, and Stephen is a normal Stephen. I just don't know, man. So lethal, so fast...if he hadn't had me and Jim, he could easily have had a stroke or a heart attack the night they hit and died right then."

"Jesus. I didn't even think of that." Brian winced.

"I'm sorry. I know he means a lot to you. He does to me, too."

"Yeah. I'm just glad you got there in time."

"Me too. Um...here's another hypothesis, if you're up for one."

"What the hell. Shoot."

"We could both be right. It could be that if by some miracle a lethal-gene victim survives the onset of the senses, he or she adjusts. Maybe not to be a 'normal' sentinel, but enough not to die, at least. Once again, Stephen would be either among the few, or the very first, to make it, so he'd be the only example."

"I don't pray that often, but I think I'm going to make an exception and hope to God you're right."

"I'll be shaking my rattles, too," Blair agreed.

 

* * *

"Mm?" Stephen, disoriented, shifted a little.

He felt a heartbeat at his back and nuzzling warmth at his neck, as a gracefully flared jawbone settled on his shoulder. "Hi. I'm your two-headed transplant."

"Blair," Stephen smiled without opening his eyes, then squirmed and stretched, dislodging the chuckling Sandburg. Stephen was still smiling when he galumphed over onto his back, blinking in the late afternoon light. "I'm not going to encourage you," he said, squinting at Blair and reaching over to tug gently at a curl. "How'd I get here?"

"What's the last thing you remember?"

"We were doing some kind of...hypnosis thing..."

"I was wondering about the memory spelunking I do with Jim, if it would be effective with you already. Apparently I picked a bad time to try to find out; I just put you to sleep instead."

"Schist. How long before I'm worth something again? I haven't slept so much since I was... _born_ , practically."

"Steve, you just went through a _world_ of shit. If you were anyone else, you'd be recuperating in the hospital, probably for at least another week. It'll be at least a few weeks before you're really yourself again."

Stephen muttered something, then wondered "Where are Jim and Brian?"

"Watching a game in the TV room. Listen for yourself."

Stephen frowned, then closed his eyes and did. "Yeah...eesh. Find the dial, turn it down..."

Blair sat up quickly. "Spike?"

"No, I just walked right in on one of Jim's blue-ribbon belches."

Blair cracked up. "I am _so_ glad I'm not a sentinel sometimes. What'd it sound like?"

"Like a belch, except like the Jolly Green Giant belching in an echo chamber."

Blair laughed again. "I was talking about the gross aspects of being a sentinel with Jim once, and he said they have their upside. For one thing, he knows when to hit the current floor button and clear out of an elevator before it's too late, no matter how audibly discreet the offender in question was."

Stephen made a God-spare-me face and rubbed his forehead and eyes with one hand. "Hell. You're sure there's no way to just get a return on these damn senses?"

"No deposit, no return, man. You just gotta put in your time and you'll have as much control as you need...most of the time. You know by now that the senses can be wonderful, too."

"Yeah, if you live through the first part...what are you doing here, by the way? Just checking on me? Or have you been babysitting?"

"I've just been kicking back. Jim and Brian are too; they felt like watching a game, I felt like letting my mind wander. So I let it wander in here with you."

"You've been babysitting."

"Don't be so sensitive. We've let you nap alone before. But if I'm bugging you..." Blair started to get up.

"No--" Stephen reached out and grabbed a handful of oversized grey sweatshirt. "No," he said again, more softly.

Blair turned around, taking the hand that had grabbed his shirt. Stephen was staring at the deep blue bedspread; he didn't take his hand back, but he didn't look up.

"Between your and Jim's thing," Blair said softly, "the emotional shock of dealing with that for however long until you guys decided on the camping trip, then what happened...to _cause_ your senses to activate, and then your senses actually _activating_ , and then four days of...God, of _hell_...you'd be a total sociopath if you _weren't_ clinging like a limpet to everyone you felt you could trust."

"I still feel like a wuss."

"Tsk. What would Dana say if she heard you talking like that?"

"That it was my father talking...and that it was my father I was talking _to_ when I said it."

"'You're the sssssnake charmer, baby,'" Blair grinned as he recounted the Laurie Anderson performance. "'And you're also...the sssssnake.'"

"'It's a closed circuit, baby,'" Stephen grinned back at him. "Only I don't 'have the answers in the palm of my hand'."

"None of us do, man," Blair said softly, in his low, rich voice. "None of us who know better than the snake charmer/snakes of the world."

"You know, speaking of Dana..." Stephen trailed off rather miserably.

Blair covered a snort with one hand. "Wondering what you're going to tell her?"

"I've already had to cancel our next two appointments. She's gonna be getting suspicious, and I can't tell her _anything_ before I talk to Jim about it. Do I tell her Jim and I are at it _again_? While he's with you and I'm working on being with Brian? And _you're_ working on being with Brian? Do I tell her I'm a sentinel? Do I tell her Jim's a sentinel? Do I tell her you two are our guides? Are guides and sentinels _supposed_ to fuck each other? How about guides and guides? Or sentinels and sentinels? Just what the _hell_ is going on around here anyway, Blair...?!" By the time Stephen reached the end of his querulous tirade, Blair was in hysterics and Stephen was starting to laugh, too.

"What a bunch of pervs," Stephen sighed as the laughter began to die down slowly.

"Save that word for when you get to the chapter in my diss about the role of angora goats in sentinel society."

" _What?!_ "

Blair was off again. "Jesus, Stephen, I'm kidding," he choked.

"Well, don't. I nearly had a childish accident. I mean, sheep I can see. But not goats."

"Personally I'm into alpacas, but I digress. Jim called to order supper in; want to go see if it's here yet?"

"What'd he get?"

"Thai. He made sure to get you lemon-grass soup."

"Ooh, yum. I knew there was a reason I loved him. Let's go."

 

* * *

They were in Rafe's car, because all of them could fit. Stephen was sedated in the back seat, lying half in Brian's lap. Jim was driving. Blair was quiet.

"This doesn't totally shoot down your theory, you know," Jim offered.

Blair grunted.

"There _were_ abnormalities."

"Nothing like Brian's, though. You have certain abnormalities in your magnetic resonance images, too, Jim."

"But not like Stephen's."

"Stephen's are a lot closer to yours than to Brian's."

"Blair," Rafe tried, "what we were talking about the other day--maybe I was right. Maybe this just means that for _him_ , he's normal."

"Everybody is normal for them _self_ ," Blair expostulated.

"You know what I mean. How many sentinels have you met? Three. Jim, a psychopath, and Stephen. None of them are quite the same, are they? I mean, Barnes didn't have the slightest vestige of that protective impulse that you assumed was an ingrained aspect of a sentinel."

"She was crazy."

"Stephen hasn't got it either, though. He's a businessman--something like a merchant or a supply-manager of the tribe. Someone whom a sentinel would _protect_ , not a protector. Wouldn't he be a cop or a soldier or a fire fighter or a rescue worker or something if he had that instinct? He's not even _married_ , with a family to protect."

"He has a point," Jim said softly.

Blair sighed and let his head fall back on the rest. "I hate you all."

"We love you too," Brian said quietly.

"Blair, Burton didn't have all the answers," Jim tried. "If he didn't, how can you?"

"Just let me think, all right, you guys?" There was a note in his voice that let Jim and Brian know that Blair was in his "I'm the only one with a clue so I'd better get cracking" head. The responsibility sat on him like a visible shadow. 'All three of us,' Jim thought idly. 'All three of us so protective, so sure we're the only thing standing between Stephen and insanity or death. I wonder what Stephen thinks about that.'

"Okay," Jim sighed.

They finished the drive back to Brian's in silence.

 

* * *

I can't bear to think about those first four days.

It's interesting, though--I remember there was pain, horrible pain; but as with anyone else, it's impossible to remember exactly what the pain felt like--to remember it fully. I guess that's good. If we remembered every pain as vividly as we felt it when it was happening, the human race would die out--no woman would _ever_ have more than one baby except under duress. And we'd all go noisily insane. Imagine being hit with the feeling of that double sinus infection, that burst appendix, whenever you chanced to think of it.

Brrr.

I haven't had a thought in over a week now besides just continuing to breathe in and out and do what Blair and Brian tell me. Brian's actually coaching me on his own some, now. When he touches me, it's like a rush of cool air clearing out a room full of dank, smokey heat. His voice wraps around me like a blanket. I hear him, feel him near me, his body is beauty and safety and sustenance. With him, I can feel the tracks in the grass where a sparrow walked. I can hear the humming of the planetary magnetic field. I can see moonlight on individual waves five miles away. I can taste a storm coming in the air, and tell by the smell of a few molecules of smoke whether the logs burning in a fireplace eight blocks over are cedar or pine. With him, I can see colors on the sun.

I love you, Brian. God. Please don't hate me for needing you so much.

I'm the focal point, the center of the universe...it feels like it's all coming to me, coming _in_ to me, filling me, transforming inside me into one continuum, one whole. I am the synthesis of universal singularity, the universe in microcosm, the universe come back together into an ever-changing oneness. Five senses leading into me, five streams pouring into a single pool, five ways to know that flowers are suns and rocks are rivers and nebulae are the softness of Brian's hands holding mine right now--to hear light, to smell hunger, to see the deep, murky red of saxophone music.

Before, I thought I would lose my mind, and I would rather have died.

Now I'm willing to just let it go. I look at Brian, and he's smiling, and I can see that he wants to ask me a question, even though he hasn't moved or changed his expression at all. I can hear my Jim downstairs in the big dining room, looking at that gigantic sideboard. He's thinking about me. I know because he keeps sighing in a certain way. Blair just walked in the front door, and he's tired and pissed off and annoyed by something that happened at work. I can tell by the sounds of his body and by his smell.

Sounds crazy, doesn't it? All I know is, I have never, ever felt more real.

"Yes," I say to Brian. "I'd love for you to kiss me."

 

* * *

Brian blinked. "How did you...?"

"That _is_ what you were going to ask me, isn't it?"

Brian nodded mutely.

"Well?" Stephen cocked his head, smiling at the other man.

Brian smiled back and leaned forward, pressing his mouth to Stephen's.

 

* * *

Rather than arrange anything more elaborate, Jim and Brian took their vacation time, since they'd both accumulated too much to hang onto much longer anyway without losing it. Blair came and went from the university, splitting his time between his job and working with Brian and Stephen. Stephen didn't spike again during that time, but he also never got rattled while Brian wasn't there, so it was too soon to tell if the danger of separating them was past.

One afternoon, Blair was sitting at the kitchen table, his laptop on but unattended, as he gazed out the back door at Jim and Stephen. They were both smiling as they talked, chuckling occasionally; Jim had his arm around Stephen's waist from behind, where they stood by the little fountain-birdbath, and was taking Stephen's hand with his free one to hold just over the burbling turbulence at the center. They both watched as he lowered Stephen's fingers in--and Stephen convulsed with laughter, yanking their hands back as Jim laughed too, squeezing him, and Stephen cackled loud enough to hear through the closed patio doors "It tickles! It feels alive..."

"How's it going?" Blair heard Brian's voice behind him, and felt an elegant hand caress his hair.

"I just can't get over it," Blair said softly, still watching Jim and Stephen as Brian came up and started rubbing Blair's shoulders gently. Jim had lifted Stephen's wet fingers to his lips, mouthing lightly at the twinkling water droplets. Stephen sighed and let him, his head falling back against Jim's shoulder in contentment.

"I know. They're beautiful, aren't they?"

"They're beyond beautiful, but that's not what I meant. It's Stephen...all the tests I'm running. I don't know what I'm not seeing, but something about him, something connected to his abilities, is different from Jim."

"Like what?"

"Like I said, I can't put my finger on it. I don't know if his senses are actually any different from Jim's...maybe it's something about the combination of the senses and Stephen himself. I'm not even sure we should be calling him a sentinel--after all, the tribe sentinels did a specific job, one that Stephen's not cut out for and wouldn't have been even back when. Like you said, he wouldn't have been a hunter or a warrior; he wouldn't have been what Jim instinctively is."

"What should we call it, then?"

"I guess we could just say that he has heightened senses and leave it at that. There must have been some word in some language for a person who has the senses but no hunter-warrior-protector instinct..."

"Well, don't look at me. I'm the new kid on this particular block." Brian kissed the top of Blair's head as he kept rubbing.

 

* * *

They'd decided to see if Stephen would be all right sleeping away from Brian if he slept on something that smelled like him, so they moved the sheets from Brian's bed onto the bed in the sentinel-proofed room--they were too big, but so what. Blair had elected to stay with Stephen, seeing as how last time Stephen spiked in the night it had been Jim with him; that was the excuse he used, anyway, checking another factor. It was actually because he wanted Jim and Stephen to sleep instead of talking half the damn night like they usually did.

Snickering, Stephen had described to Blair the leery way Rafe and Jim had figuratively circled each other in Brian's bedroom, as though daring themselves and each other to say anything about the fact they were getting into the same bed, until finally relenting.

"Why do they care?" Blair had wondered, shaking his head, more because the behavior exasperated him than because he didn't know. He was the one with those kinds of answers, after all. " _We_ don't care." He was propped up on his pillow, facing Stephen.

"Ah, you know. Cops and their macho crap. I mean, they're _gay_ for God's sake, and still the whole me-heap-big-macho-stud-never-sleep-with-other-big-macho-stud--wait. Brian's falling asleep, finally."

"They've slept together before. Camping, or on stakeout. Though I admit that on stakeout, most of the time one or the other of them was awake while the first one crashed."

"Hey, you're the anthropologist. Don't ask me what their problem is. Especially since I keep seeing them checking each other out recently."

Blair chuckled. "I noticed that too. Think they'll do anything about it?"

"I don't know. You know what a low profile Brian has to keep, what with never being seen with a woman. On a date or anything, at least."

"Yeah, I see what you mean," Blair sighed, lying down.

"You sound disappointed," Stephen chuckled. "Been thinking of adding them to your jerk-off fantasy oeuvre?"

"I could do worse," Blair grinned back through the dimness. "Though _you_ and Jim would be hard to beat. Pardon the expression."

Stephen snorted. "Say goodnight, Blair."

"Goodnight, Blair..."

 

* * *

"Blair."

"Mm."

"Blair? Are you awake?"

"No."

"Blair, I need to talk to you. I just had this dream..."

Blair blinked and sat up at once. "A dream?"

"Yeah. A really vivid one."

"Dials okay?"

"Yeah. Fine."

"Hold on. Cover your eyes." Blair turned on the lamp on the table on his side of the bed and fumbled for his laptop. He pulled it up on the bed and opened it, powering up. "Okay, shoot."

Stephen figured out what Blair was up to as he adjusted his eyes--he still felt strange doing that, rather than waiting for them to adjust--and wondered "You're going to..."

"Yeah, I'm going to. Anything wrong?"

"Um, I guess not. Do you record Jim's dreams?"

"If they seem important. The visions he has when he's awake, too. I know we keep crashing into unjustified assumptions when I compare you with Jim, but for the time being he and Alex are still all I've got to go on. There hasn't been enough time to set up a decent profile on you. So, the dream...?"

"Well, it's really pretty weird..."

"It's a dream, Stephen. Don't worry. I'm not a Freudian."

Stephen smiled. "Okay. Well, I was walking next to the ocean..."

"What was the weather like? Cold? Clear?"

"It's hard to say. Breezy. Clean. It was...dark, but not _real_ dark--imagine if you could see in another spectrum than the one we usually do. It wouldn't look like light, but you'd be able to see."

"Was there a blue tint to it, by any chance?"

Stephen thought. "A little, yeah."

"What were you wearing?"

"Something...soft. Shorts, and some kind of simple tunic-type shirt. No sleeves. I was barefoot."

"Anything else? Jewelry? What about your hair?"

"I didn't notice anything about my hair. There was some kind of...a pendant or something, around my neck. No, it was...you know those little medicine bundles or whatever that were popular in Seattle not too long ago? It was a plain little bag, like that."

"Okay, keep going. Could you tell where the beach you were walking on was?"

"Well, there weren't any signs, but it reminded me of the northern California coast."

"Were you alone?"

"At first."

"Tell me how you felt."

"Lost...but not dangerously lost. I was just...walking and looking around. Waiting."

"For what?"

"I don't know. Something to happen."

"Okay, what happened next?"

"A bear came out of the woods to the east. He wanted me to follow him, so I did."

"Did he have blue eyes?"

"Yeah. I remember thinking they looked like Jim's."

"Or like yours?"

"Um. I suppose. I'm not that good on recognizing my own facial features on other...people."

"Did he speak?"

"Didn't need to. You know how it is in dreams."

"Where did he lead you?"

"He started kind of loping, so I jogged to keep up. We were heading for one of those huge eroded rock formations you see all along that stretch of coast."

"Can you describe it?"

"Well...it...as I moved, I was looking up at it, silhouetted against the sky. I remember noticing that there were no stars, no clouds, no moon...just kind of an all-over glow that wasn't a glow. Bluish, like you said. And as I moved, circling kind of, the rock formation seemed to change shape along with my perspective. One minute it was just a rock formation, and I'd move to a different angle, and it would look more like a buttressed tower, and I'd move again, and it was a...like the facade of a cathedral."

Blair was typing like wildfire. "Anything else?"

"Yes, a lot of things, but the way I'm telling it makes it sound like it was happening slowly. We were pretty close to it--it wasn't all that high--and as fast as we were moving, the changes came really quickly. I'd barely have time for one to register when it had already gone through two more, if you see what I mean."

"Yeah, I got you. Okay, so the bear leads you to this spire of water-carved rock."

"Yeah. The spire stood right where the waves reached highest up the shore, just washing against it; the base was maybe six inches deep in water at any one time. I could feel the water. It was cold, but not _cold_."

"Was the tide coming in or out?"

"It wasn't doing either, as far as I could tell."

"Okay, go on."

"So I go in, and there's kind of an...I guess you could call it an altar. It was carved into the wall. There were candles burning in niches on either side of it."

"Do you know what kind of altar?"

"No clue. I wish you could have been the one to see it, _you'd_ know. I do remember that it looked...kind of sparse. Plain. There were the two candles, and a niche with a sculpture inside. In front of that was a flat ledge with a tablet on it."

"Was anything written on the tablet?"

"If it was writing, I couldn't read it. It was just...a jumble."

"How about the sculpture?"

"It was...well, it was an oblate spheroid, basically. Carved from the rock of the formation itself. Like I said, it looked more like a proto-altar--or maybe something all-purpose, like your friend Saray has? She just sets it up for whatever's appropriate, and the rest of the time it's neutral?"

"Does anything in particular make you say that?"

"No. It was just the feeling I got, looking at it."

"Okay. What happened then?"

"The bear sat down. He looked at me a minute, and then I was looking at..."

"At yourself?" Blair asked softly.

"Maybe. Like I said, I wouldn't know myself from Adam in a crowd. It could have been me."

"Okay. What then?"

"He asked me what I feared."

Blair's hand made a noisy snafu and he began backspacing. "Right. And what did you say?"

"I started looking around, stretching the senses like you taught me, and they started to...merge, like they have been doing."

"That synesthesia effect you described to me earlier."

"If that's the word for it. It wasn't like the piggybacking trick you and Jim have been teaching me. And it's not quite like the definition you showed me for synesthesia."

"No, it doesn't sound like it. Synesthesia is an actual condition; the word can't adequately describe something like what you were telling me. Anyway, you began to experience that..."

"And he said--like I'd told him that that was what I feared-- 'The merging comes from your soul.' And I said 'Great, but my teachers don't know how to deal with it, and if we can't find a way to stop it, it's going to kill me.' He said 'You can't stop it, but you can merge with it. You can become it.' I said 'Jim was given the option of rejecting his senses. Why don't I have that option?' He said 'Your brother was given the choice of accepting his gift at the cost of commitment to its use in defense of the tribe. He had to become his gift as well. But you are not a defender.' And I said 'What am I, then?' And he said 'You are one in need of defense.' And I said 'No shit, sherlock, but what I need defense from is my own body. And in any case, how can I commit to becoming my gift if I don't know why I have it?' He said 'You can't. But you can commit to the search for that truth.'

"Well, that shut me up for a few, I can tell you. Finally I said 'You're telling me that my only options are to stay like I am or commit to some kind of journey of self-discovery, complete with these wacked-out senses?' And he said 'There is another option.' And I _knew_ he was talking about dying. I think it must have been an option a lot of people who had this version of...of whatever, must have taken over the years."

"That wouldn't surprise me," Blair murmured. "What happened then?"

"I said 'I still don't understand why Jim had the option of turning this down, and I don't.' He said 'The sentinel, the defender, his gift comes from his heart. Yours _is_ your heart.' And I said 'That's nice, but it doesn't tell me much.' He said 'For you to reject your gift would be to reject your self. All of your self. You are a rare and precious asset to the tribe--or you will be.'"

Stephen stopped for a while, thinking. "This next part gets pretty nuts."

"I'm on top of it, Steve. Just roll with it."

"I said 'Option three is out. So what do I have to do?' He said 'Accept your life, your soul, your purpose. Accept yourself.' Which is always good advice, but I didn't see how accepting myself was going to accomplish much of anything. I said something like that, and he said 'You are one in need of defense.'

The next thing I know the ocean rushes up and in less than a heartbeat, I'm in deep water--deep _under_ water. I'm not drowning, but I am--sorry--out of my depth. The senses are all at maximum, and with them all functioning as a unit, I can detect the speed and temperature of the currents, the shape of the sea bottom, reefs, shoals of fish, my depth, clouds microscopic plants and animals, the whole megillah. Then I realize that there are shapes circling me. It's making me nervous--I can detect their outlines, but they just feel like big fish. I have all this information, but I don't know what to do with it. I can't use it to defend myself.

"As the shapes get closer, I figure out that they're sharks. If I'd known that sooner, I might have been able to swim for it, or at least that's what I'm thinking. But I didn't know what a shark would come across like, exactly. So I'm saying my prayers...actually, I'm cursing that damn bear. Anyway, that's when the dolphin shows up."

"Dolphin?"

"Have you ever seen a dolphin take on a shark? On film, I mean."

"Actually yeah, but this was only one dolphin?"

"Big dolphin, but yeah. Bottlenose. About as large as any one of the sharks."

"Go on."

"Well, the dolphin did that swim-at-top-speed-and-bang-the-shark-in-the-gills-with-your-beak thing that they do. They can stun or even kill a shark with one blow that way, even ones larger than they are. Usually they're in pods, like you say, so even several sharks wouldn't stand a chance--the fact that this is a dream comes in here, I suppose. The dolphin was moving like...well, like an impossibly fast dolphin. Pretty soon there were all these inert sharks rolling aimlessly in the water.

"Then the dolphin heads for me, but he's not charging. He comes up and floats next to me, and I know he wants me to grab on. So I do. Then we're moving. My senses are still up; I can still sense our surroundings for miles out. He's a dolphin, and he's good at detecting what's down here for long ways, but he hasn't got my precision. He wants me to tell him what I'm sensing.

"So I start telling him. Using what I say, he gets us away from the rest of the sharks that were moving in when they heard the circling, before they can pinpoint our location--I tell him where there are certain features in the underwater landscape, and he knows how to use them to get us out of danger.

We get to the shallows and I slide off his back and stand up; the water's only up to my waist, just barely enough to keep him floating." Stephen paused.

"What happened then?"

"I didn't want to leave him. I felt like I knew him."

"What color were his eyes?"

"Um...I couldn't say. I can say they didn't look much like dolphin eyes. Kind of human."

"What did you do then?"

"I started walking up out of the surf, but I stopped. He was still there. This part is pretty stupid, but I asked him to come with me, yeah right. But he didn't laugh. He just said he'd be there when I needed him, and then he swam away.

"I turned back around, and someone was standing on the sand." Stephen smiled. "It was Jim."

Blair smiled, too. "What did you do?"

"I ran up and hung on to him for dear life. He held me a while, and then he said I needed to go into the temple. I almost asked what temple, but then I realized he was talking about the rock formation with the proto-altar in it. I asked him to come with me--this is almost an exact echo of the dolphin thing, and he said he couldn't, but he'd be there when I needed him. Then he kissed me, and then he turned around and started off down the beach at an easy jog, toward the south.

"You'll never guess who I ran into next."

"The bear again?"

"No. You."

Blair blinked. "Me?"

"Yeah. I went inside the rock formation again; the water was back down to where it had been before. You were in there, sitting on the rocks next to the altar. By the way, the altar didn't look the same. That ovoid thing was a sculpture of a dolphin, and the tablet had what looked like cuneiform on it. Which I can't read, of course, but at least I could recognize it.

"I said 'Blair, what's going on?' And you said--I can't quote you directly because you said too much, but--"

Blair snorted. "That's okay. Go on."

"You said 'In the early days of psychological practice, dreams of emerging from the water were thought to be representative of the birth experience, especially if one is pulled or carried from the water. Or, in our cases, more of a death-and-rebirth experience. Of course, these days we know that it's seldom that simple. Dreaming of being submersed in water can also mean feeling metaphorically drowned, overwhelmed, or lost in an alien environment where you don't know the rules. Then again it also might mean the sheet's over your face and you can't get enough air. Marshmallow?' And you handed me a marshmallow you'd been toasting over one of the candle flames."

Blair made a muffled squawk. "You are kidding me."

"No, and it was a good one, too, not too crisp, not too raw...anyway, I said 'So which do you think applies here?' And you said 'Hey, man, you're the one with the merging senses. The druids used to have a legend about a pool of water fed by five streams, which represented the five senses; and in this pool, all the senses blended and merged, becoming one. Over the pool grew a hazel tree, and eating hazelnuts that had fallen into the water was supposed to impart great wisdom. Water references again. It's all very interesting, but I think the main point is probably elsewhere.' And I finished the marshmallow and said 'So what is the--' but then I knew. It was the dolphin on the altar, the dolphin who worked with me, turning my senses into something useful when the information they gave me couldn't have saved me.'"

"You realized this after eating the marshmallow."

"Yeah. And I turned around and ran out of the rock formation...but the beach wasn't there anymore. I looked back, and the ocean was gone, too."

"Where were you?"

"I was walking in the forest."

"Were you dressed the same as before?"

"Yes."

"Go on.

"There were people there, other humans I mean, moving around in the trees; they didn't seem to be a particular threat, so I didn't try to hide from them or anything. But after a while, I started to feel uncomfortable. If there was a group of people talking, they'd fall silent when I started to get close, and start talking again when I'd passed. They didn't look like real people, exactly...more like shadows of people, in that light. They didn't have the same kind of substance that I did."

"Okay, you're beginning to be creeped out by the shadow-people's behavior...then what?"

"I kept walking, a little faster. I didn't have any real reason to be afraid, and I wasn't really--I figured I was being stupid. I mean, no one here knew me or could have anything against me, so why would they bother me?

"Then I realized I'd been hearing more noise behind me than around me or in front of me--voices and noise of walking through the brush. I swerved off to the west, thinking that if it were just a group of people moving through the trees, they'd pass me. But I kept moving, and I realized that there were sounds to the south now, too; so I tried to cut back up north--but I was cut off that way. And now the east was covered. That was when I realized that I was being herded.

"The senses hadn't helped. I'd known the people were there, but everything they were doing seemed so innocuous...until I realized I'd walked into a trap.

"Everything happened pretty fast after that. Shadow people started coming out of the trees overhead, the brush around me. They didn't have weapons, but there were a million of them, and whatever they wanted with me, it could hardly have been good.

"Then something grabs me by the back of the neck and shoves me down on my face. It knocks the wind out of me, and I struggle, but then Brian's voice says 'Hold still, you idiot!'"

"Brian's voice? He's the one who pushed you down?"

"Yeah. And I manage to turn my head and look up, and there he is--he's crouching over me, out there in the middle of the woods, in a Versace suit, Italian dress shoes and a London Fog trench, and his badge on his belt. He's got his thirty-eight out and he's firing like crazy, picking off the shadow people--hell, shooting behind his back every now and then so they can't get too close. Just when I'm hoping to god he's got another clip on him, I realize they're all gone--the ones he hit evaporated, and the rest ran away.

"So he stands up and pulls me up, and kisses me hard, like he's desperately relieved, but pissed, you know--"

"Yeah, I'm familiar with that kiss," Blair said dryly. "As you might be aware, Jim's got a version that'll dislocate your jaw. So what happened then?"

"I looked in his eyes," Stephen said slowly, "and I heard the ocean."

"You _looked_ at Brian and _heard_ the ocean."

"More like...I saw the sound of the ocean."

"Oh, man," Blair murmured softly, typing furiously. "What happened then?"

"Then...I knew he was the dolphin."

"And then?"

"He said 'You needed me, and you didn't tell me before you came out here, and I was almost too late. What do you think I'm here for?"

"...then?"

"Then I woke up."

 

* * *

"So what do you think?" Jim asked, turning a smooth, flat stone over and over in his hands.

"I think it's pretty obvious that the forest wasn't supposed to symbolize a forest, and the shadow-people weren't supposed to be people." Blair sat on the log next to Jim, looking down toward where Stephen and Brian knelt by the water. Stephen was sitting back on his heels, his hands flat in front of him, buried partway in the sand. The waves rose just high enough to fill the little hollows they made with foam, then receded away from them again. Brian was beside him, hands on his shoulders, mouth near his ear, talking slowly to him in that low, calming voice Blair had first heard him use when he pulled Stephen out of the spike that hit him in the shower.

"Any more than the sharks were supposed to be sharks. Obviously."

"That all might seem to go without saying, but I think Stephen's dream was...there's a technique used in anthropological notes and records called 'thick description'. I think Stephen's dream was even less straightforward than your visions usually are. I mean, your jungle is mostly just a setting for the action. Stephen's settings were multi-layered, messages in themselves. The shadow-people were most likely any number of possible threats or problems or mishaps that could come to someone like him who tried to use his senses without the right kind of guide to look out for him. But that's only one thought. There's also the aspect of his not having been aware he was being boxed in and herded before it was too late, because he has no experience with that kind of thing. Like I said, it's complex."

"And that kind of guide he'd need would be?"

"Well, we've already noted that not everyone with enhanced senses would necessarily make a suitable active sentinel. And if the senses are genetic, as apparently they are, there could easily be more than one person with heightened senses in a given tribe at a time. Say the tribe was at war, or there was some other immediate situation which necessitated getting everybody with a sense advantage out there keeping watch--for bad weather, or messages from the next tribe, or whatever; it wouldn't necessarily have to be a war situation. Who would you send out with someone like Stephen? Me?"

"Well, you'd want...someone who could protect him."

"And shore up his weaknesses as a spy or a tracker, as well. Someone who could take the information he can give them and apply their own talents and skills to make it useful to the tribe. _You_ don't need someone like that--you can do all that yourself. You need someone like me, to shore up your own weaknesses. And since you're the warrior, you protect _me_. But in a situation like Stephen's, the guide would protect the sentinel, not the other way around."

"So we were looking for the reason Stephen responded to Brian the way he does...in the wrong place."

"Well, I wouldn't go that far. I'm willing to bet our other theories apply here, too. After all, the way Brian got to him was nothing short of astounding. But the factor that could explain it at least to a degree wasn't there in the genetic question, the chemical or behavioral question; it was that side of it that both of us have some trouble dealing with--you because you think it's malarkey, and me because I can't quantify it and be totally certain that it's only your genetic memory talking to you through your subconscious: The spiritual side of being a sentinel. Stephen knew--or part of him did--instinctively, that he needed a warrior-guide. Not another protectee like himself, and not another sentinel. He needed a hunter-tracker-fighter. Because I think..."

"What do you think?"

"I think Stephen might be a shaman."

"A sentinel shaman?"

"Some things in his dream made me think so--some things that reminded me of the role I sometimes play in your dreams. And besides, how do you explain the things he can do? He can practically read minds, Jim. What would the logical role of a person with that ability _be_?"

Jim shook his head. "I don't know. Have you talked to him about this?"

"Some."

Jim pondered. "So just any...any modern tribal-warrior type--Megan, for instance, or someone from any of the specialties Brian pointed out after Stephen's MRI--would have been able to bring him out of the spike Brian did?"

"No, probably not, or you probably would have been able to do it, sentinel or no--if that were _all_ he were responding to. But about the only advantage you actually had was that you were his brother and he loves you--he was used to feeling safe around you, at least by the time his senses hit. Brian, on the other hand, fits a lot of different criteria. He _is_ an excellent natural cop, good instincts, practiced skills, quick insights. He has familiarity with dealing with the sort of trouble Stephen was in; maybe that's connected with his own asymptomatic disorder, maybe not, I don't know. What I _do_ know is that for whatever reason, he has the innate ability to guide. How many people would have taken to it like he has? How many people wouldn't have called 911, put Stephen in a hospital and me in an interrogation room to find out just what the hell I thought I was doing keeping a critically ill man from needed care? He's just got something that it takes. Finally, he and Stephen know each other, trust each other, and--just as an added bonus--are attracted to each other. The first thing I said to Brian was right--the odds of someone walking through our door who fit all the parameters of what Stephen needed--especially since at the time, I didn't know what they were--were less than shit, Jim."

"Kind of the same as the odds of your finding me."

"Kind of. Yeah. But I did find you."

They joined hands discreetly and squeezed, then let go.

Jim looked back down the beach toward the other two. "What about the umbilical factor? Do you think Stephen's ready to take a test drive on his own? Really on his own, I mean, without Brian no farther away than the next floor or so in case something happens."

"He hasn't spiked since...since that time with you..."

"Um. No, but Brian hasn't been far, either, and Stephen _knew_ that. When I said something to him that upset him, he lost it and spiked. Could knowing that Brian isn't close by do the same thing to him?"

"I have to admit that knowing I didn't have my panic attack meds with me used to bring an attack on by itself occasionally. But I can't think of a way to test that. We can't hide Brian nearby and tell Stephen that he's across town; Stephen will be able to sense him. For that matter, let's keep in mind that Stephen, at least with Brian near him, can multitask in a way you're _still_ learning how to do. For all we know he's listening to us right now even though he's also working with Brian."

Jim made a raspberry. "Not Stephen. I told you. He's _nice_. He got all bent out of shape the last time we eavesdropped on you and Brian--acted like he was going to have to give me a lecture on the use and abuse of sentinel senses. Anyway, Stephen's worried about Brian's attitude about all this. He doesn't want Brian stuck with him forever."

"I know, but he's scared, too. He nearly died, in a terrifying way."

They both just gazed down at the other two for a while, as the sun continued to sink. The contrast of Brian's paler skin against Stephen's tan had Jim focusing in closely, just on the colors...the contrast in texture...

"Jim. Don't zone."

"I'm not. What'd Stephen say--I'm just drooling."

Blair leaned against Jim, not too obviously for a semi-public place--they had some privacy due to the curve of the beach here. "I think that bit about being there when he needs you--you and Brian both told him that in the dream--is probably directly relevant to the umbilical problem. We just have to figure out what he was telling himself...or what whoever is in charge of mixed-up sentinels was telling him, or whatever combination applies."

"Yeah." Jim sighed; those words had touched on one of his favorite contemplation topics. After a moment, he wondered idly "Do you think they've had enough sun yet? Brian's going to burn."

"I saw you rubbing that sunblock on him," Blair chided in a naughty-boy voice. "He won't burn for a while longer."

"I was just helping out a friend," Jim muttered.

Blair chuckled. "Jim, why is it so hard for you and Brian to admit you--"

"It's just not us, okay?! You think Stephen's attractive. Has it ever occurred to you to proposition him?"

"Well, no. But I like being close to him. You and Brian might as well relax and learn to enjoy that, too. You're going to be seeing a hell of a lot of each other."

"Pervert," Jim chuckled. "You just like the idea, don't you. Quit trying to put me to bed with Brian to juice your own libido." Jim was grinning, but Blair knew when Jim was trying to head off a subject.

"Jim, by greater societal definition, all four of us are perverts. You and Stephen worst of all. Butt you know that what you and Stephen have isn't wrong. Like I've said before, even if it hasn't got another reason--a good reason, such as people being hurt in some way, or killed--society will automatically define anything different as being a danger to society only and solely because it _is_ different. Considering the danger of harm usually involved with incest, there's a reason to be leery of the concept, but the general public doesn't take things a case at a time--it totally generalizes. Therefore, you and Stephen are not only disgusting but evil--two brothers sleeping together is an outright abomination. Yet you know that what you and Stephen have together is right. You know that what you and _I_ have together is right. Well, what's the big damn difference between all that and four guys who care about each other? You know group marriages are the norm in most primitive societies, and quite a number of more advanced ones up until--"

"Okay! Lord, lay off with the group marriage talk. Fine, I'm macho and anal retentive and I just don't see myself and Rafe."

"Because it would be like having sex with your brother."

"Yeah, exac--" Jim slumped. "You total, fucking asshole," he grumbled with a got-me grin as Blair began to giggle evilly. "But you cheated. You know what I'm talking about, you know it's different with Stephen and me."

"Yeah, Jim, I know. I didn't say go rip off Brian's trunks and blow him. I just hope you two can keep relaxing and getting more comfortable like you've been doing, not...hit some cutoff point, and wind up uncomfortable because you got too close."

"I'm afraid we'll just have to wait and see on that, Chief."

"Yeah." Blair rubbed Jim's shoulders gently. "Think of Stephen, okay? It'd be hard on him if you guys wound up with pokers up your asses over this whole thing."

"Just let Brian and me handle Brian and me. And we'll _all_ keep thinking of Stephen."

They watched Brian and Stephen a while longer; then Blair spoke. "It kind of makes sense Stephen saw Brian as a dolphin."

"Why? 'Cause he's...you know, graceful and sleek like one?"

Blair smiled at Jim's revealing observation. "Maybe partly. But dolphins are big on rescuing. They take care of their own sick and injured, bringing them food and lifting them to the surface for air. They've even been known to rescue floundering swimmers who get swept out too far, get them to the surface if they're losing it and bring them back inshore. They especially do that with children."

"Really? Wild dolphins?"

"Yeah. They'll also defend each other, and again, sometimes humans, from sharks. They like to hang around certain places where humans swim a lot, and just play, too. If you offer them something to eat they won't turn it down, but they don't care if you don't. They like to give little kids horsey rides sometimes. They also ask scuba divers to come play--they do that by breaking out of the pod play group and swimming around you a couple of times, then swimming back, the same way they do with dolphins from other pods. This is a cool thing I saw on TV once--some people rigged up a keyboard so it could be played underwater, and went diving with it. The dolphins thought it was the greatest thing. They started kind of jamming out, like groupies around a stage, and some of them would come up to the diver who had the keyboard and bang on the keys with their beaks, play it themselves. It didn't take them any time at all to figure out where the sound was coming from, or how to get the keyboard to make it."

Jim chuckled. "Really. I wonder if Stephen knows all that."

"Some of it, I'm sure. He probably saw a film about dolphins in school or something."

"You think Brian ever dreams about a dolphin?"

"One who tells him urgent but incomprehensible things and occasionally turns into a Rafe look-alike?" Blair wondered.

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking."

"Does he remember anything...unusual the night Stephen had his dream?"

"He's told me he usually doesn't remember dreams for long."

"When are we going to tell him about the visions?"

"I think it'd better be soon. Things are moving fast."

Blair sighed. "Maybe tonight would be good. Now that he's seen what you and Stephen can do, he might be more willing to give another dose of far-out ideas the benefit of the doubt."

"Whatever you think. You're the shaman/shrink/behaviorist/sentinel expert. I'm just a big dumb flatfoot."

"Which is why I love you," Blair said, patting Jim's head.

"Oh, shut up," Jim grinned. Blair cracked up. "I love you, too. Always, Chief." He took Blair's hand and squeezed again.

"I know, Jim. I know."

 

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In this series, Jim and Stephen had a loving, consensual (and vanilla) sexual relationship in their teens, and are beginning to get back into it as adults.


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